It's alive, IT'S ALIVE!

For anyone reading this post, all you have to do is look at the next most recent post to see that it dates from Christmas of 2012.  What happened?  Well, in 2013 a number of things happened.  As you recall, Pope Francis was elected, and what seemed like a new springtime for tradition in the Church became a time of questions and unease.  In 2013 I also became a pastor for the first time at St. Mary of the Purification in Mount Forest, Ontario, and found that my time was much more limited, particularly my first year of settling into the new role.  Around that time too, blogs began to transform from something everyone did to professional blogs with multiple writers, while everyone else was posting on Twitter and other forms of social media.  Nowadays, of course, most younger people are on TikTok, and the visual medium has taken over for them, others are producing podcasts, and everyone else is still on social media. 

So why have a revived a nine-year-old blog that hardly anyone remembers, and hardly anyone read in the first place, especially since I'm on social media, and have my own fledgling podcast?  Just because, because in my current role I do have time to produce some extra content each week, because it's nice to have a little outlet for my thoughts and musings, and because if my thoughts and reflections help even a single person in their spiritual lives, to grow in their faith, to find their way to the Catholic faith, or just to find some hope in knowing that someone out there does think they way they do and they are not alone, it is worth it.

I doubt I will be able to post daily content like most of the professional blogs, but hopefully, in the midst of everything I can find the time to put up a couple of posts each week, so check back for more new content, here on Great and Glorious!

A Rant, Because It's My Blog - For Crying Out Loud Catholics, Celebrate Halloween!

I'm not sure when this trend started, I remember it beginning at least a decade ago, or perhaps a little before, this apparent aversion Catholics have to Halloween.  I should say the aversion that seems to be present among some circles of Catholics, an almost fundamentalist approach to what is essentially a Catholic holiday.  Instead of the traditional costumes and images of ghouls and goblins, we have to dress children up in saintly costumes, and call the day "All Saints' Eve".  Even though the term "All Hallows' Eve" means precisely the same thing.  I remember during my highschool years, the first "All Saints" party held in my home parish, where ghoulish costumes were verboten, and only saintly attire was permitted.  I also remember one occasion during my university days when I was visiting one of my favourite Christian bookstores on October 31st, and a delivery man had just dropped off a shipment to the young woman working the checkout counter.  As he was about to depart he wished her a "Happy Halloween", and in a very indignant fashion she responded, "I'm Catholic, I don't celebrate Halloween, I celebrate All Saints' Day."  I'm sorry but, give me a break! 

Halloween is as Catholic a day as they come.  It originated in Irish popular piety as a day to recall the reality of Hell.  Thus, Halloween is, say it with me now: SUPPOSED TO BE SCARY.  It is a day to remember the sad fate of the souls of the damned, and that Hell is a real possibility for all of us, unless we strive to enter by the narrow door.  The earliest celebrations of "All Hallows" began in the 300s, but was celebrated in May, on May 13th in fact, the day it is still observed in some Eastern Churches.  It was transferred to November 1st in 844 when Pope Gregory III consecrated a chapel in St. Peter's Basilica to All Saints.  It has NOTHING TO DO with a druid harvest festival.  There is no agreement among scholars that the pope consciously transferred the feast to "baptize" the pagan festival of Samhain, and the idea that the pope would transfer a feast of the Universal Church for the sake of a small group of pagans at the edge of the world seems to me to be rather far fetched.  The appropriation of Halloween by pagans is a modern innovation, not extending any further back than the late 19th century. 

It is quite true that the celebration of Halloween has become as much secularized as many other Christian feasts, Christmas being chief among them, and so dressing up children in secular costumes like Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga, frightening as that may be, is not the true intention of Halloween either.  But to dress children up as saints for this day also misses the entire point of this particular observance.  We honour the saints tomorrow on November 1st, we remember the souls in Purgatory the following day on November 2nd, but this day, October 31st is to remind us that there is a third possibility for us after we die, one we should avoid at all costs.  

I'm going to step out on a limb here, I hope you'll join me, I'm going to suggest that ignoring the true heritage of Halloween plays right into the Modernist ideals that have infected the Church over the past decades.  Today we only talk about heaven, a great many Catholics don't even have a concept of Purgatory or the need to pray for the dead any more.  The generally accepted idea is that when we die, we all go up to heaven, no stops along the way, and you really don't even need to be that holy, as long as you're a good enough person, it's a free pass right upstairs.  This is totally at odds with Sacred Tradition and the teaching of Our Lord in Sacred Scripture.  Nonetheless, good Catholics seem to be playing right along, and ignoring the teachings of our Church on the Last Things.  Halloween is not about the saints, that is for tomorrow, today is a day to remind ourselves, and catechize our children, that Hell is a reality, and it is something we need to strive to avoid by living lives that are truly Holy!

Further reading:
http://www.zenit.org/article-35858?l=english
http://www.fisheaters.com/customstimeafterpentecost12aa.html
http://www.wordonfire.org/WoF-Blog/WoF-Blog/October-2012/Culture--Time-for-Catholics-to-Embrace-Halloween.aspx
 

The Year of Faith Begins

Today inaugurates the Year of Faith called for by Pope Benedict.  It also marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962.  It's often said that the Church works in centuries, so we just have 50 more years to go until the Council is properly understood and properly implemented, right?  Perhaps.  Of course at this point in the Church there still rages the debates of the proper interpretation of the Council, with those on one side arguing for the "spirit" of the Council to be held in higher regard than the actual words of the documents.  On the other we have those who would even doubt the validity of the Council.  The truth as it always is, is of course somewhere in the middle.  Unless one has one's head in the sand, it's not hard to see that the process of change and growth in understanding of the Council is still ongoing.  Many younger clergy, religious, and laity are studying the documents thoroughly, through the lense of "continuity" as our Holy Father has called for, and working for a balanced understanding of the Council; working to correct many of the extreme responses (on both sides) that have taken place over the last 50 years (though I must acknowledge, the majority of the extreme responses do seem to have been to one direction over the other).  We pray that this ongoing process of renewal continues, under the inspiration and prayers of Blessed Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict.

As depicted above, the CCCB has issued a pastoral letter marking this auspicious occasion entitled, The Second Vatican Council: What was it and why is it important today?  The article on the document can be found here, and the document itself can be found here.  I'd like to offer some of my thoughts on this pastoral letter.  First of all, my kudos to the authors of the document for many of the fine points it makes, especially with regard to the proper interpretation of the Council:

"We see good fruit, however, where the Council is understood properly. This has been strongly emphasized by Pope Benedict XVI, who has pointed out that Vatican II, rather than being an event of 'discontinuity and rupture' with the Church before the Council, is to be viewed in continuity with the Church before it. It was not a break, but an act of reform. For this reason, we do not reject what came before the Council as being outdated, nor do we consider all that came after as inconsistent with the Church’s Tradition.  Moreover, we cannot appeal to the 'spirit' of the Council as if this were opposed to the 'letter' of the Council’s documents. The Church that existed before Vatican II is the same Church we belong to today. Yet it is also true that things did change after the Council."

"Rather than making the Church worldly or 'modern,' the Council’s job was something else entirely: it was 'to overcome erroneous or superfluous contradictions in order to present to our world the requirement of the Gospel in its full greatness  and purity.'"

The letter describes what a Council is, and a bit of the background to why Blessed Pope John XXIII called the Council in the first place.  My critique of this letter comes though in what is has to say, or doesn't say about the four Constitutions of the Council.  The paragraph on the Liturgy, I think, sadly misses the mark.  It does speak about some concerns with the liturgy before the Council, such as a lack of understanding of Latin by the laity (which is easily resolved through the use of a bilingual hand missal), and the hurried celebration by many priests (a genuine problem, but not the worst liturgical abuse out there, especially considering what came after the Council).  As always it emphasizes the "full, conscious, and active participation" of the laity, but fails to explain that this paragraph is to be interpreted primarily as interior participation, not exterior.  This paragraph also extols the near universal use of the vernacular, something not called for in Sacrosanctum Concilium.  Finally the paragraph seems to point out that the liturgy is a constantly changing thing, perhaps to justify the liturgical changes since the Council.  It fails to note however, that for 1500 years any structural changes to the liturgy were relatively minor, and the wholesale recreation of the liturgy following the Council is not called for in any of the documents.

As for images of the Church, triumphalism is bad, but I'd take a little triumphalism over the mistaken notion that so many Catholics have today, that the Catholic faith is just one among many.  With respect to the Universal Call to Holiness, it is true that some before the Council didn't understand this notion, but this idea did not begin with Vatican II, it is present in the preaching of saints down through the centuries even into the 20th century itself (it's a central feature of the preaching of St. Josemaria Escriva for one).  As for the paragraph on Salvation, again it seems to imply that the understanding that non-Christian religions have some value for evangelization was a brand new idea at Vatican II.  Someone might want to tell that to those who evangelized Asia and used their native religions and the truths found therein as their starting point.

There is much more that I could critique, but this article is getting too long already.  Once again I'd like to offer grateful thanks for the emphasis on the fact that we must understand the Second Vatican Council in light of the 1900 years that went before it.  Sadly though, the first part of the document seems largely to follow the theme that the Church began in 1962 with all of these new ideas, and so seems to contridict the latter half.  On the whole, worth a read as we begin this year of faith, but it should be an invitation to read the documents themselves and see what the Council really had to say.

Pastoral Letter on Freedom of Conscience and Religion

Yesterday the Canadian Bishops issued their new Pastoral Letter on Freedom of Conscience and Religion.  It makes a number of charitable but forceful points about the need for the free exercise of religion, in both the private and public spheres, and even gives a fervorino at the end about the need for bold courage in the face of persecution.  Some excerpts:

"Recent international and national events present a disturbing trend of threats to freedom of conscience and religion  experienced by those who suffer from bias, prejudice, hate propaganda, discrimination and persecution because of their  religious beliefs."

"Conscience is not, however, an absolute placed above truth. Rather, by its very nature, conscience has a relation to objective truth, a truth which is universal and which all must seek."

"Believers must therefore be allowed to play their part in formulating public policy and in contributing to society as a way of living their faith in daily practice. When this right is truly acknowledged, religious communities and institutions can operate freely for the betterment of society through initiatives in the social, charitable, health care, and educational sectors, which benefit all citizens, especially the poorest and most marginalized."

"In the past decade in Canada there have been several situations that raise the question whether our right to freedom of conscience and religion is everywhere respected."

"We all need to be vigilant in preserving, in a respectful manner, the religious symbols and  celebrations which express the particular spiritual heritage of nations shaped in the crucible of Christianity. Forcing religious believers to keep their convictions to themselves, while
atheists and agnostics are under no such restriction is, in fact, an expression of religious intolerance."

"Those who refuse to cooperate with an unjust law or practice that would oblige them to act against their conscience – and are not given the right to conscientious objection or accorded respectful accommodation – must be prepared to suffer the consequences that result from fidelity to Christ."

Read the rest there.

Sunday Homily - Speaking with Authority

Hello all, it's been a while again since I last posted, things have been busy, especially with the pastor away for some holidays, and the accompanying break-in and other sundry craziness.  So here are three homilies backlogged from a few weeks back.  I think for the time being, I will just be posting the audio, transcribing takes a bit more time than I have available.  Enjoy!

Musings on the Mass - The New Translation (Part II)

Over the past week I have had the opportunity to not only celebrate the Mass using the texts of the new translation, but also to observe several other priests celebrate as well, and I could not help but note something, which is perhaps so obvious as to be overlooked.  In my last posting on the new translation, I observed that the new words carried a certain passion about them, something which I was very glad to see and experience.  The implication of course being, that seeing the passion in the new words, it became that much more painfully obvious that the old translation was very much bereft of passion.  That being said, there is (and I'm sure just about everyone would agree on this point) also a high level of solemnity to the new translation, a gravitas to the new words, a level of formality to the prayers not experienced since the introduction of the Missal of Paul VI into the vernacular.  Having observed several of my brother priests celebrating with this new translation something becomes apparent.  The old translation begot (in some priests) a rather casual manner of celebrating the Mass, congruent with the more casual language of the text.  Having that same causal manner of celebrating imported into the new text now causes a rather significant incongruity, I think.  Similarly, the hymns which have accompanied the celebration of Mass for the last several decades, especially those by the triumvirate of Marty Haugen, David Hass, and Lucien Deiss, now seem rather out of place, as we seem to be constantly switching back and forth between sing-songy hymns and the elevated language praising the transcendent God of the Missal.  Perhaps the new translation will begin now to have an ever broader effect, both to the ars celebrandi of priests, and to the musical selections by choirs, as we look towards the future of the Roman Rite, and the way we celebrate the praise and worship of our Almighty God.

Advent "Non-Doing"

A couple of days ago, the first real snowfall of the year made its way through southern Ontario.  At my present location there is a vast open field behind the building, with grass, trees and some flower gardens.  As I walked past a rather wide window and looked out on the entire scene covered in a blanket of snow, I just said to myself, "Now it's Advent!"  What did I mean by that?  Well certainly there is very much an association with snow in my mind with this time of year, coming from Montreal originally, we know what real snow is.  As I reflected further on my own exclamation, there is a good connection between snow and what the season of Advent is really all about.  When snow is covering the ground, all of creation is asleep, waiting.  Plants and trees are not growing, they are dormant, storing up energy for the spring time when they will bud forth into new life.  Advent is about waiting, and it is about not doing.  Out in the consumer world, the time leading up to Christmas is about anything but not doing, it's about endless shopping, and "holiday" parties, to the point where Christmas just becomes an anti-climax, as we collapse exhausted after the pre-Christmas hustle and bustle.  Perhaps we can take a clue from God's creation around us, as it waits calmly, serenely, patiently, and quietly for the coming spring, so we in this holy season of preparation are invited to wait in the quiet of our hearts and homes for the coming of our Saviour.  This Advent let's pull back from the doing, and enter a bit more into the being, the patient and quiet waiting for the springtime of our Saviour's arrival.

A Rant, Because It's My Blog - The Proper Use of "Bishop"

...after all, what's the point of having a blog if you can't go on a rant every now and then.

Last Sunday I had the privilege of assisting our Emeritus Auxiliary Bishop with the celebration of Confirmation at a neighbouring parish and the experience got me pondering, of all things, the direction in which our English language is headed.  To be more specific, I began to ponder how we have started to use the word "bishop", and what that might mean.

I think most would agree that our English language has gone downhill over the past century.  If you read anything written by someone with even a mediocre education from the 19th century or even the early part of the 20th century, then read something written by a university graduate in the last couple of decades it's clear that there has been a marked decline in the quality of the English language, at least in how it is used.  As someone quipped recently on another blog, in a couple of generations we have gone from teaching Greek and Latin in high school, to teaching remedial English in university.

Now to the rant, let's take a look at the word "bishop", for those with some understanding of English grammar and syntax, this word functions as a common noun, but not a proper noun, but we have started to use it as a proper noun.  A small and trivial point you say, let's look at it in context, the word "bishop", is much like the word "priest".  Pass a priest you know on the street, and say to him "Hello priest", isn't that more of an insult, but yet we think nothing of saying, "Hello bishop".

In case you didn't know, the proper way to address a bishop is "Your Excellency".  Ah, but I hear the objections now, let's look at a few of the common ones.  First, "Your Excellency" is too formal, we want to make the bishop seem more approachable.  Well, if the bishop has to resort to simplifying his proper title to seem more approachable, maybe he needs to learn to smile more.  Second, calling the bishop "Your Excellency" is simply too difficult for the children in the confirmation class.  Really?  Thirteen-year-old children can't learn, remember, and say a four syllable word, has our education system failed that badly?  Third, formal titles like these just aren't a part of our culture any more, we function more casually.  Let me offer a story for this point.  Several years ago I was taking a summer course in Ottawa, during my downtime one day I went on a tour of Rideau Hall, the official residence of Canada's Governor General.  As the tour progressed we passed by the Ball Room (if you have ever seen an Order of Canada presentation, or the swearing in of a new government, you know the room of which I'm speaking), and in the Ball Room is a chair which is used only by the Governor General.  A small boy on the tour, perhaps only 7 or 8 asked the tour guide, "Is that where Adrienne sits?" (a reference to then Governor General Adrienne Clarkson).  The tour guide immediately corrected the child, "Yes, that is where Her Excellency sits."  (The title "Excellency" is also accorded by civil custom to the Governor General of Canada).  A tour guide working for a civil authority would not accept the familiarization or 'dumbing down' of the proper title of a government figure, even from an 8-year-old child, but we don't blink at the same thing when done to a bishop of the Church.

For centuries the Church has not only been the guardian of faith and moral teaching, but the de facto guardian of art and culture as well, but over the past several decades we have abdicated that responsibility and gone along with the debasement and banalization of culture that has gone on around us.  Maybe it's time we start to reclaim our role as guardians of culture, and perhaps we can begin with the language we use.  The next time you see a bishop flash him a smile, and give him a nice "Hello Your Excellency".