The Quiet Corner,

a weekly meditation on the Sunday Gospel, by the Reverend John A. Kiley,

as published in The Providence Visitor since 1974.

The Quiet Corner            by the Reverend John A. Kiley                4 January 2007

       A corner classroom marked “2B-206B” was where it all began.  It was September, 1955 and any parochial school student whose parish still had a ninth grade was accepted at LaSalle Academy only in the tenth grade.  So here we were, 25 or so of us, from St. Michael’s and Blessed Sacrament in Providence, St. Matthew’s in Cranston, St. Charles in Woonsocket and assorted other institutions of Catholic learning assembled for the first time with “Chet” Hanewich as homeroom teacher.  A bishop came out of that homeroom: Most Reverend Paul Loverde of Arlington,VA; a Supreme Court Justice, Joseph Rogers; several priests: Fathers Peter Cavanaugh, Charles Quinn, John Kiley; a deacon, John Needham; a journalist: Bob Chiappinelli; business men like Jack McGeough and Dick Daley; at least one doctor, Harry Iannotti, and several educators like Tom O’Connell, Kevin Lavin and the recently deceased Dan Donahue.

       Dan Donahue was, to quote his obituary, “a keen reader, an incorrigible talker and an entertaining wit.”  Dan and John Needham and I stayed especially friendly over the years, often picking out a city in New England to survey during a holiday drive.  Dan would be talking from the moment we left home until we finally returned to his driveway.  Dan did not keep secrets very well.  At least not other peoples’ secrets.  In his years as a teacher, we knew all the foibles of every elementary school teacher in North Providence and Cranston.  In later years when Dan volunteered at Rhode Island Hospital and at the Rhode Island Prison System, there wasn’t accident or an ailment or a criminal lament that didn’t merit a full report.  Dan certainly had an eye for the ridiculous.  God help the party who perpetrated a gaff or a faux pas in Dan’s presence.  They might not hear about it but everybody else would.  Dan’s repertoire of jokes was extensive but rarely refreshed.  His friends smiled indulgently on the third or forth hearing.   And he was indeed proud of his stint on “Jeopardy.”  Presidential cabinet ministers, Academy Awards winners, cardinals of the Curia were at the tip of his tongue.

       Besides being entertaining, Dan was also very dutiful.  His mother Anna was thirteen years in Pawtuxet Village Nursing Home and hardly a day went by when he would not visit her on his way home from work.  When Anna died and his Aunt Ruth began to fail under the burden of her years, Dan was there again wheeling her to the dining room or pointing out articles in the newspaper.  His years, perhaps decades, of service to Rhode Island Hospital and the prison system really became an occupation for him.  He seldom missed a scheduled day.  True, he enjoyed chatting with everyone in the hospital cafeteria about topics that he would then phone his friends about when he returned home.  But there was a true sense of commitment, of being needed, of doing good, that brought him much satisfaction. 

       Like many of us, Dan’s early education was by the Sister of Mercy and the Christian Brothers whom he always appreciated.  A few years in the seminary helped Dan develop a keen and authentic sense of Roman Catholicism.  He knew every priest in the diocese but would always call them Father in public.  He was a no nonsense believer who would start thumbing through a missalette in plain view of the preacher if the sermon was too long or too corny.  He obstinately lobbied for Communion under both species.  Several of his priest friends have taken the hint.  Guitars, pottery, and colorful stoles were not to his taste.  On the other hand, he tried out the Latin Mass at Holy Name and compared it to a long bike ride.  It sounds good but after a while you ask yourself how you got into this.  Devotion, decorum, and dispatch were the qualities of a good liturgy in Dan’s book. 

       Dan was expected for a birthday dinner on a recent Monday evening but he didn’t arrive.  Phone calls to his home on Jamestown went unanswered so a phone call to the police was in order.  Dan was sadly found on his cellar floor.  A bag full of newspapers to be recycled was nearby.  A telephone was almost within reach.  Our hospitals, nursing homes and prisons have lost a faithful advocate.  Several of us have lost a friend of fifty-one years.  We’ve also lost a source of endless news, witty observation, insightful commentary and, every so often, heartless ridicule.    Dan would have turned 66 this past Tuesday.   May he now rest in peace.                                                                   COMPLETE

       Amid the splendors of Sacred Heart Rectory in Pawtucket when I was first ordained was a framed print of two nineteenth century French priests enjoying a rectory visit together.  The print was entitled “une bonne histoire” -- for readers not from Woonsocket that means “a good story.”  One priest is stretched out on his chair in laughter while the other priest is leaning forward as if to reveal the punch line of his good story.  Both priests are in cassocks.  One is wearing a preacher’s collar, a style which sticks out under the chin like a bib.  There are a couple of bottles of wine, a few glasses and some coffee cups on the rectory table.  Upholstered chairs, an armoire and a tall clock complete the picture.  The clerical camaraderie is palpable.  A print of the same scene caught my eye while visiting an historic home in London many years later.  Again the sight of it evoked the same sense of priestly fraternity that has sustained celibate priests down through the ages.  And I am very pleased to report that I now have this same picture as my screen saver on my computer. 

       While looking for something on the Internet, I came across a site on anti-Catholic literature or prejudice against Catholics or some such.  The site was replete with nineteenth portrayals of Catholic excesses and deficiencies.  One page on the site was entitled “The Minister’s Home.”   It displayed a properly suited minister, his voluminously draped wife, and several children, all properly attired and soberly facing the camera.  The scene was otherwise unadorned.  It was a no nonsense picture of domestic law and order.  And lo!  Opposite this tableau of Protestant respectability was my treasured print of the two French priests!  Here the print was entitled “The Priest’s Home.”  And of course here the open bottles of wine, the several glasses and cups, the raucous enjoyment of the tale being told, the absence of wives, the dreaded cassock, and the baroque furniture completing the picture all served to confirm a non-Catholic’s worse suspicions about rectory living.  Protestant decency or Catholic dissipation – take your choice.   

       Priestly celibacy has been a source of mystery and ambiguity for centuries.  Remaining celibate in a world in which intimacy is taken for granted makes the practice quite peculiar.   Failure to live up to the challenge of celibacy has unfortunately scandalized many.    And since the Bible itself mandates that a man should “cling to his wife” in order to “increase, multiply and fill the earth,” celibacy almost seems to run counter to Revelation.  Still, our Pontiffs persist in teaching that celibacy is “the jewel in the crown of the priesthood,” as Pius XII wrote decades ago. 

       Those who view celibacy only from a practical angle (Father is too busy to raise a family) miss the point completely.  And those who understand celibacy only in terms of self-denial (Father offers it up) are also wide of the mark.  Celibacy is indeed a sign of contradiction in this over-sexed world we inhabit; the celibate priest clearly bears witness to values beyond the physical. Yet authentic celibacy is more than being an institutional witness to heavenly values.  Celibacy is not just a state in life.  Celibacy is a way of life.     

        Authentic celibacy should be personally enriching.  True celibacy enables the believer to grasp that life in its totality is a grace. The married man, the family man, is sacramentally pledged to discover God especially in his spouse and offspring.  His vision is legitimately focused on particular individuals and exacting circumstances.   The celibate is invited to find God in broader relationships.  For the celibate, “Everything is a grace,” as George Bernanos’ dying country priest reflected.  True celibacy implies openness to the totality of life, eagerness in finding God everywhere and in everyone, readiness to accept the plan of God in weal or woe.  True celibacy engenders not just a resignation to the Will of God but a keenness to discern the Will of God in all circumstances as a manifestation of God’s enduring love and tender mercy.  While every believer should see the hand of God throughout life, the celibate is especially called and enabled to detect God’s personal Providence in everyday events.  Everything is indeed a grace and a true celibate will teach this effectively through and throughout his life.        COMPLETE

       One of the most popular images associated with the Second Vatican Council is the biblical depiction of the “People of God.”  One can easily picture the ancient Jews, saved from slavery in Egypt, guided daily by the cloud and pillar, led finally to the shores of the Jordan by the valiant Moses.  This image certainly suggests the ideals of community, solidarity, fellowship, cooperation and more than hint of destiny.  When Pope Paul VI composed his Creed summarizing the teachings of Vatican II he entitled this lengthy act of faith “The Credo of the People of God.” 

       While the Church as the People of God clearly has a worthy biblical foundation, it should be remembered that this is a pre-Christian notion and as such lacks some of the richness of the New Testament images of the Church as the Body of the Christ or the Church as the vine and the branches.  It is all well and good to appreciate the Church as a community, as a pilgrim people on the march to eternity.  But this popular image of an unstructured and egalitarian fellowship working its way toward heaven reflects more the sociology of the last fifty years than it does the theology of the past two millennia.  Pope Benedict XVI, while still prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, used the word “banal” to describe this emphasis on the Church as communal “people of God” rather than on the Church as the structured “body of Christ.”  He observed, “Thus, for many, the Church is a human invention, an institution created by the Christian community, which could easily be reorganized according to the needs of the historical and cultural variables of the time.”   The prefect went on to remark that “ the Church is not ours, but the Lord's; to reconstitute a truly Catholic climate means to want to understand once again the meaning of the Church as Church of the Lord, as a place of the presence of the mystery of God and the Lord resurrected in the world."

       The second reading from St. Paul this coming Sunday is his familiar instruction on the Church as the body of Christ.  The apostle rightly celebrates the unity of the Christian faithful in Christ: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.”  So the Church is definitely constituted as a people.  The Church is not merely separate individuals before God.  But the Church is not just a body like the body politic that makes up the voting public.  St. Paul clearly teaches: “Now you are Christ’s Body…”  The strength of the Church does not come from its own resources.  The vigor of the Church derives exclusively from Christ.  Yet, as Cardinal Ratzinger pointed out, the Lordship of Christ is often ignored in his own Church.  The Mass as a community meal competes with the Mass as the renewal of Christ’s sacrifice.  The voice of the faithful echoing fashionable trends challenges Christ’s original deposit of faith offering perennial Christian truths.  Talk about an equality of ministries reflects a feminist/socialist theory and disregards the Church’s hierarchical framework willed by Christ himself.  Proposals for the election of bishops and ordination of women defy the apostolic succession dating back to the Savior himself.  Some thoughts on marriage and family ignore the spousal aspect between Christ and his Church. 

       In order to hand on effectively the true and original meaning of Christianity, St. Luke today in his prologue carefully reminds his readers that he is recording truths as the “ministers of the word have handed them down to us.”  St. Luke feels obliged to cite sources that have a direct link to Christ himself.  Indeed he refers to his sources as “eyewitnesses.”  The historical Jesus and his intentions, his plans, his designs, are paramount for St. Luke.  The authentic church community will always treasure communication with Christ as Lord through prayer, sacraments, Scripture, Church structure and doctrinal integrity.  Christ remains the head of his Body; believers are his members drawing their strength from union with him.  Christ is the vine supplying life to the branches who otherwise wither apart from him.  Christ is the cornerstone, the only true foundation on which the living temple of the Church may be established.  The true Church is the “Church of the Lord,” where his plans for history are paramount.  COMPLETE

       Father Charles Curran, one time moral theology professor at St. Bernard Seminary, Rochester, NY, and now Christian ethics professor at Southern Methodist University in Texas, was certainly one of the best teachers I ever experienced.  Father Curran had a knack for drawing several disciplines together to make his point.  Moral theology, canon law, dogma and Scripture would blend to illustrate the lesson of the day.  Weighty matters were presented in a pleasant even jovial manner – even when the first ten minutes of the class were spoken in Latin.  Father moved from St. Bernard’s early in his teaching career to accept a position at Catholic University in Washington.  It was there that Father made a name for himself, so to speak.  In a recent autobiography, “Loyal Dissent,” Father does not shrink from admitting that he was adamantly against Pope Paul VI’s declaration on the regulation of births.  Father’s insistence on dissenting from what he claimed was a noninfallible teaching brought him before bishops, cardinals, the Holy Office and even then Cardinal Ratzinger himself.  Other views chiefly in the area of human sexuality also contributed to his undoing on Catholic campuses.   He has been in effect silenced for some time.

       One aspect that stood out in his recent autobiography was how much the 2006 Father Curran was present in the 1965 Father Curran.  The Church as “one, holy, catholic, apostolic and sinful” was one of his pet ways of emphasizing the pilgrim nature of the People of God, still on their way to perfection.  The debatable “fundamental option” theory, whereby a sporadic offense did not invalidate the basic orientation of a person’s life, was another way of dealing with the basic goodness but inherent weakness of mankind.  Father’s appreciation of the mediational, that is, the incarnational or sacramental, nature of Catholicism drew flesh and spirit, nature and grace, the human and the Divine, into the Christian life.  Father also understands the catholicity of the Church in the same vein.  The Church must penetrate all areas of life: ecclesial, historical, physical, spiritual, natural and supernatural.  Ninety-five percent of what Father Curran taught then (and no doubt what he teaches now) was the Gospel truth.  The other five percent sadly merited all the attention and the consequence condemnation.

       Father Curran described his own spirituality as based on the Paschal Mystery – the dying and rising of Christ. Certainly Father has experienced a number of spiritual deaths and resurrections in his academic career.   With this in mind, it is difficult to understand his adamant stand against Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul’s solemn espousal of natural birth regulation.  Regulating births by limiting marital relations to the wife’s infertile periods introduces a cycle of dying and rising, of self-control and self-expression, of restraint and rekindling, into the marriage bed.  Thus the Cross of Christ, which Father admits has revitalized his own life so often, can become the means of refreshing the bond of matrimony.  The limited self-denial needed to respect the wife’s fertile period makes the return to lovemaking all the more meaningful and rewarding.  Thus the basic Paschal Mystery – God bringing life out of death – can be experienced and appreciated even in the tenderest moments. 

       Father Curran takes exception to the Church’s teaching on family planning because it places too much emphasis on the physical act and ignores the experience and intentions of Catholic couples as well as the insights of some Catholic theologians.  What the faithful would see as the exercise of Pope Paul’s teaching ministry and prophetic charisms, Father Curran, sad to say, sees only as an expression of Papal authority.  Had Father’s notable insights been put at the service of natural family planning (as well as the insights of dozens of other Catholic theologians of a modernist bent), the spirituality of Catholic married couples would have risen appreciably.  And the same might be said of those who have faced abortion, divorce, and homosexuality.  The scholarly determination to understand and explain Church teaching would, in the long run, have been a better use of Father Curran’s own teaching charism.  I am undoubtedly a better priest today for having had Father Curran as a teacher – his later liberalism notwithstanding.  But I am an even better priest today for having had Paul VI for a teacher – his restricted popularity notwithstanding.  While quite different, the contributions of both men have been significant.                                                                                                                     COMPLETE

       The trouble with post-Vatican II Catholicism is that it doesn’t leave many free evenings.  Oscar Wilde first made this remark about socialism and Richard John Neuhaus has wisely applied it our current situation.  And upon reflection the observation is certainly true.  The contemporary active Catholic has parish council on Monday evening, Bible study on Tuesday night, liturgy committee on Wednesday, prayer meeting on Thursday, adoration on Friday, Marriage Encounter or Renew or Promise Keepers on Saturday, and youth group or CCD on Sunday.  A generation that makes much of the liberation of the laity ironically confines the Catholic laity to a religious life totally absorbed with Church enterprises.  The same is true of some prominent organizations within the Catholic Church today.  Call to Action, Voice of the Faithful, Woman’s Ordination Conference, FutureChurch -- these associations are entirely concerned with Church structure and Church business.  Even the motto of Voice of the Faithful (Keep the faith; change the Church) betrays a pre-occupation with the institutional Church.  In actuality these organizations mislead the faithful about their primary mission as Catholic lay Christians. 

       The primary focus of the Catholic laity should be the world not the Church.  How sad it is that neighboring Massachusetts, the home of Voice of the Faithful which spends so much energy re-shaping the Church, is also the home of legalized same-sex marriage.  The faithful there should be changing their laws not changing their church.  How even sadder for Rhode Islanders that our state which claims to be two/third Roman Catholic is also a state that sends two pro-abortion senators to Washington year after year.  Never mind the election of bishops.  It’s the election of responsible legislators who will respect life and family that should be occupying our state’s laity.   And the time wasted on promoting women for Holy Orders should be spent on renewing the social order instead.  Such is the primary mission of the lay faithful.

       For all the talk about the spirit of Vatican II over the past forty years, one of the most ignored aspects of that Council’s deliberations is precisely its teaching on the true role of the laity in God’s plan of salvation.  The Council clearly teaches in Lumen Gentium: “But the laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God.”  As the list of extra-ordinary ministers of Communion and lay readers and church group facilitators grows longer, the secular world is lacking in powerful Christian witnesses intent on renewing the social order.  The priesthood and religious life are not the only Church institutions facing a vocation crisis.  The true vocation of the laity has not been revealed to them yet even though Church teaching is very clear: “Since they are tightly bound up in all types of temporal affairs it is their special task to order and to throw light upon these affairs in such a way that they may come into being and then continually increase according to Christ to the praise of the Creator and the Redeemer (LG31).”

       The Scripture readings at Mass this Sunday focus clearly on the reality of vocation.  Isaiah is summoned to be the Lord’s prophet as he ministers at the altar in the Temple.  St. Paul writes of his own miraculous call to be a preacher of the very Gospel he had persecuted.  Simon Peter and the sons of Zebedee hear their invitation to be fishers of men as they work their boats along the Sea of Galilee.  Similarly today’s laity are called to transform the secular order in which they find themselves with the same vigor and energy with which Isaiah celebrated the Jews’ return from exile and St. Paul evangelized the Mediterrean world and Saints Peter, James and John guided the early Church.  These ancients well understood their vocation; today’s laity must also grasp their particular role in salvation history.  The systemic change needed to guarantee honesty in business, justice in government and truth in culture is the special province of the laity.  Such is their divine commission.

       American lay Catholics must not be timid about introducing eternal truths into temporal situations.  This is precisely the lay vocation.  It is God’s intention that his kingdom should embrace the whole world.  And it is the laity to whom this challenge is especially entrusted.                                         COMPLETE

       Soren Kirkegaard, the Danish Lutheran nineteenth century philosopher, understood Christianity to be an “either/or” proposition.  Christians could have either heaven or earth, either spirit or flesh, either contemplation or action, either solitude or community.  Maintaining a proper balance toward both aspects of God’s creation was near impossible for a mankind weakened by sin.  The wise man had no alternative but to choose one path of life or the other.  The saint would obviously prefer heaven over the earth, the spirit more than the flesh, the church rather than the world.  To try to have it both ways was a spiritual death sentence.  Kierkegaard could certainly look to the history of Christianity to confirm his thesis.  The early Christian martyrs had to choose either fidelity to the Gospel message or allegiance to the Roman Empire.  The earliest monastics had to decide between the whirl of pagan antiquity or the inner peace afforded by prayer.  The Church’s many religious orders and congregations have demanded a choice between the sacred and the secular, between the Christian community and the world.  Every day believers are confronted with a choice between saintliness and sinfulness, between virtue and vice.  Kierkegaard is correct in reminding Christians that they cannot have it both ways.  Or is he?

       The incarnation of Jesus Christ gives mankind a rather new perspective on the duality within which the believer must work out his salvation.  In Jesus Christ, the God-man, heaven and earth are met; spirit and flesh are joined; prayer spawns action and inner peace generates true community.  In Christ, the eternal truths of revelation are announced through the timely words of Scripture.  Clearly the sacraments join earthly realities like water, bread, wine, oil, hands, vows and words to heavenly graces like unity, forgiveness, fellowship, prayer and enlightenment.  The Roman Catholic Church especially has employed earthly wonders like painting, statuary, music, architecture, palm, ashes, medals, books and beads to convey transcendent truths.  Through Christ, man does not have to choose between earth and heaven.  In Christ and in Christ’s Church, both are met.  The challenge is to discover the sacred within the secular, to perceive what Bishop John A. T. Robinson happily called “the beyond in our midst.” 

       When Kierkegaard preferred “either/or” to “both/and,” he was in good company.  In St. Luke’s version of the beatitudes, read at Mass this Sunday, the choice between the spiritual world and the material world could not be clearer.  Without adding any qualifiers, St. Luke boldly writes, “Blessed are the poor…Blessed are the hungry…Blessed are the weeping.”  And then he adds with even more audacity, “But woe to you who are rich…Woe to you who are filled…Woe to you who laugh.”  For St. Luke there is no middle ground.  The poor, the hungry and the weeping are at a distinct advantage.  The rich, the fulfilled and the amused do not stand a chance.  The saints, in St. Luke’s estimation, will always choose the spiritual world over the material world.  The choice is poverty or wealth – the former leading to salvation, the latter leading to damnation.  Again the saint will readily prefer hunger to satisfaction – self-denial to self-fulfillment.  The saint will also opt for the tears of sorrow over the tears of laughter.  Asceticism is more salvific than merriment.   St. Luke, living in the midst of the Roman Empire’s excesses, envisioned a clear break with the pagan world as the only valid path to the Kingdom of God.  Spirituality and moderation were incompatible, if fact, impossible in St. Luke’s moral theology.  Either/Or was indeed his motto.

       St. Matthew happily took a more benign look at the beatitudes inherited from the sayings of Jesus.  The former tax collector’s pronouncements about the nature of holiness are all somewhat qualified.  It is no longer the poor but rather the poor “in spirit” who are especially blessed.  It is no longer the empty-bellied hungry who are favored but rather those who hunger and thirst “for justice.”  It is no longer all the teary eyed who hold an advantage but rather those who are stressed over certain issues like death, peace, purity, compassion, violence and persecution.  Clearly the much more moderate beatitudes of St. Matthew have prevailed in the Church at large over the last two thousand years.  Relatively few Christians have actually fled the world in disgust as St. Luke would seem to demand.  Most believers have preferred to balance soul and body, admittedly a precarious feat.  St. Augustine thought that abstinence is easier than moderation.   Sometimes a single radical choice is easier than a lifetime of recurring options.       COMPLETE

       His Eminence, Francis Cardinal Arinze. Prefect in Rome of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has distinguished himself lately as a defender of Roman Catholic orthodoxy especially when dealing with liturgical excesses.  In an address to a French liturgical commission, he recently cited abuses that result from “an undue place given to spontaneity, or creativity, or to a wrong idea of freedom.”   Sad to say, most Catholics have been to Masses in which balloons, birthday cakes and puppets were more in evidence than the crucifix or the bread and wine.  But more to the point today were other words of the Cardinal to his French audience.  The African prelate lamented “the error of horizontalism which places man at the center of a liturgical celebration instead of vertically focusing on Christ and his mysteries.”  In an era which exalts community, in a generation which extols caring and sharing, in an age in which the sign of peace has more significance than Communion Itself, decrying the horizontal nature of the liturgy (which it genuinely does possess) might seems unfortunate or improper.  Is it possible that the final words of the Mass commissioning the worshipers to go forth in the service of the Lord are misspoken?  Could St. Martin of Tours and St. Vincent de Paul and Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa have been wide of the mark when they distinguished themselves by their obvious concern for community life?   Certainly not.  The horizontal dimension of Christianity has been integral to the faith since Christ first welcomed the multitudes who followed him to the countryside.  Christianity is an evangelical community one of whose primary obligations is to spread the Good News by word and deed to the masses.   Outreach can never be separated from the true faith.

       Yet as important as charity and justice are to Christianity, worship is even more important – and this is the Cardinal’s point.  The chief purpose for which Mass is said and for which the sacraments are celebrated is the greater honor and glory of God.  The worship of the Father through the renewal of Christi’s sacrifice, through the offering once again of Christ’s Body and Blood on Catholic altars is the chief obligation of the liturgical assembly.  Christians are first and foremost a worshipping people and only then a missionary people as they invite their sisters and brothers worldwide to share in Christ’s single, supreme sacrifice of obeisance.

       The primacy of the Father in the Christian life is no where more evident than in the Sermon on the Mount of St. Matthew or the Sermon on the “level stretch” found in St. Luke.  Every action outlined here by Jesus Christ refers all activity back to the Father.  Turning the other cheek when struck, standing unclothed in public, lending to deadbeats, loving one’s enemies, praying for those who speak ill – these are not natural human responses.  No one does these things instinctively.  A motivation higher than self-respect or self-concern must enter into the picture.  And the higher motivation is God the Father.  People would not naturally react by turning the other cheek in an assault or contributing good money after bad to a borrower.  Only a higher incentive could provoke this.  And St. Luke makes this higher incentive clear when he writes, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”  St. Luke is writing here of an ethic of the Father.  The Father is the primary motivation for all authentic Christian activity.  The Father is the center of the Christian life, as he was the center of Christ’s life and Christ’s preaching.  The vertical dimension, the orientation of the believer toward God through Christ, is the essential theme of Christ’s teaching, example and ultimate sacrifice on Calvary.  Love of the Father is the basis for all Christian morality as well as the core of every Christian liturgy.   It is by expressing this orientation toward the Father that Christians will come to be know as “children of the Most High.”

       In 1936 Pope Pius XI praised St. Francis of Assisi as the “most Christlike of all the saints.”  St. Francis won this accolade not because he was poor or a lover of nature or a humble soul or a friend of lepers and Moslems.  St. Francis deserved this title because he referred all things to the Father.  His poverty was an act of faith in the Father’s Providence.  His love of nature and lepers and Moslems reflected his belief that God was a Father to all living things.  His life was the simple message of God’s omnipresent Fatherhood.  St. Francis’ horizontal concern for creation sprang from his vertical dedication to the Creator.  Such love of the Father is still the source of all true Christlikeness and the basis of all good liturgy.                         COMPLETE

       If folklore did not inform believers that St. Luke was a physician, the faithful might well conclude that the author of the Third Gospel was a Social Studies teacher.  History and especially geography are vitally important to St. Luke even if he has to depart from his fellow Evangelists in presenting the story of Jesus’ life.  It is St. Luke who carefully pinpoints the birth of Jesus by citing the ruling elite of the day and it is the same St. Luke who zeroes in on St. John the Baptist’s entrance into public life by a similar recitation of imperial and provincial leaders.  Remember also that while St. Matthew and St. Mark place the Ascension of Jesus in far northern Galilee, St. Luke carefully has Jesus travel only two miles from Jerusalem to the nearby village of Bethany for his triumphant return the Father.  And now, in the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent, St. Luke alters the succession of the triple temptations of Jesus from the version found in St. Matthew so that the final temptation on the parapet of the Jerusalem’s Temple will leave Jesus clearly within the neighborhood of the holy city.  For St. Luke, Jerusalem is clearly the city of destiny.  For St. Luke, the Gospel author, all roads lead to Jerusalem, just as for St. Luke, the author of Acts, all roads will lead to Rome.

       St. Luke’s life of Jesus, as all will recall, commences with the visitation of the angel Gabriel to Mary in Nazareth, today a large city in the northern province of Galilee.  From then on everything heads south to the capital city, the Holy City, the city in which Christ will accomplish all his purposes: Passion, Death, Resurrection, and, for St. Luke, his Ascension as well.  In that same southern city, the results of Christ’s redemptive act will bear fruit in the glorious Pentecost event when the same Spirit who conceived Jesus, who led him into the desert for his temptations, and who guided his every step of public life, will burst forth in the Church’s first effort at evangelization.  After the first Pentecost in Jerusalem, the Spirit will lead the Church, with the same determination and resolve, toward its own destiny in Rome.  The assurance with which Jesus accomplished his journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem will be the same assurance by which the Church will accomplish its pilgrimage from Jerusalem to Rome.   The same Spirit assures the destiny of Christ and the destiny of his early Church.

       And of course the really good news is that the Spirit that led Jesus from his conception in the womb of Mary through his baptism at the hands of John and his temptations in the desert as well as along his inexorable journey toward Jerusalem is the same Holy Spirit that guides the Church now through the sacraments and the Scriptures, through the teaching authority of prelates, through the dedication of religious and through the charisms of the laity.  Jesus enjoyed triumphs and endured setbacks on his path to the Holy City.  The early Church experienced victories and overcame hurdles on its course to the eternal city.  But both Christ and the Church achieved their goal through the direction of the Spirit.   The modern Church happily has the same resource.

       The key to Christ’s victory in the dessert and his long range success on Easter Sunday was his unyielding faith in the Fatherhood of God.  Jesus refused the opportunity to make bread from stones because he believed His Father had a more nurturing plan.  Jesus turned down the easy victory that would have put all nations at his feet believing that allegiance to his Father outranked all practical considerations.  Jesus dismissed the temple stunt that would have proven God’s Providence toward him never doubting God’s solicitude for a moment.  Faith in God’s Fatherhood and a real appreciation of his own Sonship, the conviction that he was the apple of his Father’s eye, saw Christ through these triple challenges and through the ultimate challenge of the Cross itself.  Jesus clearly knew what it meant to be the Son of God, to trust unconditionally in God’s plan, to hope unwaveringly in God’s promises, to cling unapologetically to God’s benevolent Will. 

       St. Luke, the geography teacher, brought God’s plans for Jesus and the Church literally down to earth.  The path from Nazareth to Jerusalem resulted in victory and the road from Jerusalem to Rome led to success.  The Holy Spirit offers the modern Church the same prospect.                  COMPLETE

       Saints Matthew, Mark and Luke write of Jesus’ glorious transfiguration on Mount Tabor in their Gospel accounts.  St. John characteristically makes no mention of this incident since, for the Fourth Gospel, Jesus is ever glorious.  He is always the master of the situation in St. John’s account as when his very response to the band that comes to arrest him knocks them to the ground.  The Jesus of St. John’s Gospel is already victorious over evil in the mind of the Fourth Evangelist.  His triumph is a foregone conclusion.

       But the Synoptic Gospels prefer to highlight Jesus’ struggle against the powers of evil – not only his daily contest with the devil who makes his presence felt through sin, sickness, and death but even more through the ultimate struggle of Christ with Satan, specifically His Passion and Death.  In spite of the glorious outcome of Jesus’ paschal experience, the events of Holy Thursday and Good Friday were a scandal to Jesus’ friends and followers.  That the Messiah should die an ignominious death certainly countered the fond expectations of the Jewish people.  They wanted a victor not a victim.  The suffering servant motif might have had a Biblical foundation but it had little popular appeal.  The Jews had suffered enough.

       Jesus himself certainly recognized that his Passion and Death would trip up his followers, disturbing even his closest friends.  He anticipated their dashed hopes.  In a bid to strengthen the morale of his comrades, Jesus invites Saints Peter, James & John to a mountainside in Galilee where his heavenly glory is revealed in its entire splendor and his Divine vocation as Son of the Eternal Father is resoundingly affirmed.  Saints Matthew and Mark happily describe the event with graphic accuracy including the iridescent Jesus, the two ancient prophets, the celestial cloud and the heavenly voice.  But only St. Luke reveals to his readers the exact content of the conversation shared by Jesus, Moses and Elias. 

       St. Luke graciously informs his readers that Christ and the two Old Testament prophets spoke of the Messiah’s “exodus” which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.  There are few richer words in the Scripture than the word “exodus.”  The exodus journey, the removal of the Jews from slavery in Egypt and their providential arrival in the Promised Land of Israel, was the defining event for Judaism.  The God who rescued the Hebrews from the harsh rule of the Pharaoh, who guided, fed and sustained them in the wilderness, who entrusted to them the Ten Commandments, who organized them into a people as they approached the shores of the Jordan, who punished them for their sins and who awarded them with a land flowing with milk and honey would be the God that would ever after seize the Jewish imagination. This God was YHWH who was there for them in their time of need.  Now this God of the exodus who delivered the Jews from slavery into freedom is the same God who will sustain Jesus through his exodus, through his passion and death, and who will deliver the Christian world from slavery to sin and into the freedom of the sons of God.  The ancient exodus was an event of political, cultural and religious deliverance.  The new exodus, accomplished through Christ, is similarly event of spiritual, cultural and ecclesial deliverance. 

       The new exodus, the Christian exodus, is none other than the Paschal Mystery, the central mystery of Christian life, celebrated daily in the heart of the liturgy as the faithful proclaim, “Dying you destroyed our death, Rising you restored our life, Lord Jesus come in the glory!”  The Paschal Mystery, founded on the exodus of Jesus, is the dying to sin and rising to the new life of faith and charity that is the very heart of the Christian experience.  Just as surely as Jesus died on Good Friday and rose on Easter Sunday so the Christian believer is given a pledge of redemption at Baptism and then is sustained throughout his own personal exodus, through his own individual journey from sinful ways to a sanctified life.  The Jews treasured the memory of their passage; Jesus at the Transfiguration looked forward to his transit from Friday’s cross to Sunday’s empty tomb; the Christian world is encouraged to persevere in its transformation from sinful ways to faithful worship assured through Christ.     COMPLETE

       The premier English language poet of the last century, T.S.Eliot, was quoting Beaudelaire, the distinguished French language poet of the nineteenth century, when he wrote, “The spirit kills; it is the letter that gives life.”  Christians reading these words will quickly recall the similar and seemingly contrary words of Christ:  “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh avails nothing.”  Actually the phrases of both the poet and the Savior are equally insightful.  Jesus is certainly correct in teaching that man is enlivened by his higher instincts and demeaned by his fallen nature.  The reader has only to look at one’s own life to understand that mankind is better off immersed in the spiritual atmosphere of faith and belief than mired in the sensual world of the flesh and skepticism.  But Eliot has an equally valid basis for highlighting the benefits of keeping the letter of the law over embracing the mere spirit of the law.  Roman Catholics have only to look to the last forty years of Church life to understand that the spirit alone (for example, the so-called spirit of Vatican II) has indeed led to a moribund Catholicism.  The abandonment of the letter of Catholicism, all those cultic and cultural practices that were the sum if not the substance of pre-Conciliar Catholic life, has clearly diminished the religious vitality of the Church.  

       It is all well and good to have exalted ideas about community and dialogue and diversity and the universal call to holiness.  But these notions alone, however valid, are insufficient for an incarnational Church like Roman Catholicism.  Early in Lent, a Gospel passage has the disciples of John the Baptist approach Jesus and asked why John’s disciples fast but the disciples of Jesus do not.  The world might well approach the Roman Catholic community today and asked why our ancestors in the faith fasted but we do not.  There are only two mandated fast days in the Church calendar – Ash Wednesday, Good Friday.  There are only eight required abstinence days in the USA – Ash Wednesday and seven Fridays of Lent.  Is the current generation any better off because preachers advocate the spirit of Lent (prayer, fasting and alms-giving) but offer few practices by which these ideals may be carried out?  The true spirit of authentic Catholicism needs literal, practical, ordinary activities to sustain it.  Roman Catholics need holy water, genuflections, signs of the Cross, candles, rosary beads, statues, medals, ashes, palms, throat blessings, grace before meals, bedside prayers, meatless days, holy days of obligation, Mass on Sunday, confession on Saturday, stations on Friday, benediction, Rice Bowls, budget envelops, the Catholic Charity Fund, Roman collars, cassocks, veils and religious garb.  Eliot is correct when he writes ironically, “The spirit kills; it is the letter that gives life.”  Faith thrives on pious practices.

       In this Sunday’s Gospel, an arborist argues with the owner of the orchard to permit a fig tree that has been unproductive to be given a year’s reprieve.  The arborist will apply his expertise to the tree to ensure some fruit.  If his talents are unsuccessful, then the tree can be uprooted and discarded.  Every Christian knows that faith without works is dead.  “By their fruit you shall know them,” Jesus observes of his followers.  Yet many of the works that have sustained Christian believers through the centuries have nearly fallen into desuetude.  Mass attendance among Catholic Rhode Islanders is at twenty percent.  There isn’t a percentage low enough to indicate how few Catholics go to confession.  Lenten fasts and abstinences, although few, are casually observed at best.  Holy Days are nearly defunct (not entirely the fault of the laity).  Virtually every church is locked after morning Mass precluding much personal devotion during the day.  And, of course, the Bible never was very big with Catholics anyway.

       It has become fashionable to stress the distinction between spirituality and religion.  And there is a distinction.  Spirituality is an interior disposition enhanced and sustained by religious practice.  Religion is the handmade of spirituality.  Where there is sadly no religion, spirituality withers and dies. Man, a creature of body and soul, needs both traditional, Catholic practices as well as interior renewal to insure a fruitful Lent and a fulfilling Christian life.      

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       A bishop on the West Coast entertains his candidates for Holy Orders by regaling them with tales about his dealing with other bishops and then informs the candidates that he would be not be surprised to see the issues of married clergy and female clergy raised again for reconsideration by the Church.  Michael Buckley, S.J., speaking to a class of soon-to-be deacons shares his opinion that Pope Benedict will give the idea of married clergy a fair hearing and maybe even revisit the idea of women in Holy Orders.   Father Donald Cozzens, the former Cleveland seminary rector, tackles mandatory celibacy in a new book calling it burdensome and unnecessary.  Mary Testin, liturgical consultant who claims experience as a lay preacher, writing this month in Ministry and Liturgy, commends parishes that broke the law in permitting altar girls before Rome sanctioned them.  Sexism was thus undone “at least a little bit” by their disobedience.  A friend from Connecticut examining the web page for Rent-A-Priest (why was she doing that?) came across a name familiar to the two of us.  A classmate from grammar school and former Rhode Island priest now married was listed there as ready to offer sacramental services to disaffected Catholics. 

       The issue of married priests and women priests continues to be raised in the Catholic Church by persons who are influenced more by a modernist/feminist agenda then by any real appreciation of Catholic teaching on these subjects.  The authentic meanings of priestly celibacy and the male priesthood are never really addressed in the popular media.  Exactly why priests are celibate and exactly why priests are men are questions that are never actually answered in a fashion that the average Catholic can grasp and appreciate.  Rome, of course, has addressed these topics in both a thoughtful and a scholarly manner but the Vatican’s offering on these core concerns is rarely explained in the popular press or from the parish pulpit.

       The current handling of the married priest/woman priest discussions may be a sad repetition of the contraception controversy of the 1960s.  The secular understanding of birth control was readily espoused by a number of celebrated voices on the Catholic scene.  These spokesmen received all the attention and all the sympathy from the media.  The real issue – the insightful instruction on family planning re-affirmed by Paul VI in Humanae Vitae – hardly saw the light of day.  The same scenario seems to be repeating itself now forty years later.  The harm done to marriage by ignoring the Church’s teaching on family planning could now find a reflection in the harm that could be done to the celibate male priesthood if its true character is not explained to and appreciated by the average parishioner.

       Ironically the two issues of reproduction and ordination coalesce in the nuptial theology that wends its way through both the Old and New Testaments.  The images of bridegroom and bride are abundant in the Scriptures referring to God and Israel and certainly to Christ and his Church.  Yet this rich nuptial theology is untapped in popular Church discourse.  The unisex mentality, or worse the same-sex mentality, that permeates today’s society could not abide the distinct but complimentary roles of groom and bride envisioned in Scripture.  Christ and his priests as groom and the worshipping faithful as the brides of Christ would be too provocative a division for the equal rights agenda that is fashionable today.  Apparently diversity is to be celebrated everywhere but at the altar.  There all roles are interchangeable.

      In today’s Gospel the prodigal son abandons the stability of his father’s home to seek fulfillment elsewhere.  Having squandered his inheritance on worldly pursuits, he returns to his father, hat in hand, realizing now where true riches lie.  Many voices in the Church today are mouthing phrases that bespeak the agenda of the contemporary world much more than they echo the foundational teachings of the Scriptures and tradition.  It is time for present-day Church trend-setters to forego their theological loose-living, return to their Father’s house and realize the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that have been there all along but which they have left behind.       

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       “If two people love one another, who am I to stand in the way of their marrying?” thus a local politician explained his stance on same-sex marriage.  The truth is that marriage is about a lot more than love.  Marriage is first and foremost about sexuality.  Sexuality is not sexual activity.  Anyone can participate in sex – alone or with others, as the old confession manuals used to read.  On the contrary, the heart of marriage is sexuality – a man acting as a man toward a woman and a woman acting as a woman toward a man.  When a man summons up all that is noble in his masculine nature, both physically and emotionally, and shares this with a woman in an exclusive and committed relationship that is marriage.  When a woman summons up all that is noble in her feminine nature, both physically and emotionally, and shares this with a man in an exclusive and committed relationship that is marriage.

Accordingly, when a man offers a woman the fullness of his masculinity, he will awaken her best feminine instincts; he will make her a true woman.  And when a woman offers a man the fullness of her femininity, she allows him to become fully a man.  Marriage is the mutual effort of man and woman to complete one another, to fulfill one another’s noblest and native instincts, sharing this effort, God willing, with their offspring.

       Talk of inclusion, equal rights, bigotry, and homophobia notwithstanding, marriage at its core focuses on complementary sexuality, on the sexual fulfillment of the spouses, on the manhood of the male and the womanhood of the female.  Together male and female complete one another; they enhance one another; they bring one another to the fullness of their respective personalities.  What older theologies called “the consolation of the spouses” is actually the sense of well being that pervades when a couple has done right toward one another. 

       From this perspective, same-sex unions are actually acts of dishonesty of one partner toward the other.  In a same-sex union a man must necessarily deny his own masculinity, mocks his pro-creative role, and involve another man in denying his masculinity as well.  In a same-sex union women mutually deride their natural receptiveness rejecting the very essence of their feminine being.  In the end, same-sex unions and homosexual activity of any kind are a lie, a cheat and disappointment.   Such unions mimic marriage; and, even more sadly, they distract the rest of society from the true nature of marriage, exalting the rights of an individual over the purpose of a couple.

       In 1936 King Edward VIII of England abdicated the British throne to marry the twice divorced Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson.  His brother ascended the throne amid much personal timidity and anxiety.  George VI never expected to be king, was frail of health, slow of speech, quick of temper, and fond of his cigarettes and drinks.  His wife, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who died just recently at the age of 104, had faith in her husband, encouraging him to work to his greatest potential.  Together they sustained England through the Second World War.  One biographer commented that Elizabeth made George “strong enough so that she could lean on him.”  This is the quintessence of marriage: the wife promoting her husband’s hidden masculine qualities so that she could then rely on him to enhance her feminine qualities.  In a true marriage the finer aspects of both spouses are mutually elevated.  Same-sex unions on the other hand deny and defy basic human nature; they actually frustrate it.

       In this Sunday’s Gospel, religious leaders bring a woman caught in adultery before Jesus and ask his opinion on her fate.  Actually the leaders were not at all interested in the woman, or adultery, or stoning, or the Mosaic Law.  Their agenda was to embarrass Jesus in public and diminish his public esteem.  The civil rights controversy that has been introduced to the question of same-sex unions is a similar subterfuge that muddies the water and distracts from the facts.  Marriage is not about individual rights.   Marriage is about male and female complementarity.  Anything else is a distortion of the natural law and certainly the Divine plan.                                                                              

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       The festivities of the Christmas holiday and the solemnities of Holy Week might at first glance seem to have nothing in common.  Christmas is all wreaths and lights and sleigh bells and presents and fruit cake.  Holy Week is palm and stations of the Cross and fasting and vigils and lengthy Gospels.  Yet in the mind of St. Luke Christmas and Holy Week must have found some accord because he places nearly the same song on the lips of disciples who line the streets of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday as he put in the mouths of the angels on Christmas eve night.  “Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth,” sang the chorus of angels to the stunned shepherds in Bethlehem’s fields.  This Sunday the disciples will spread their cloaks, wave their palm branches, and intone, “Peace in heaven
and glory in the highest.”   Peace and glory, two promising qualities of the heavenly kingdom that Jesus came to earth to establish, are to be revealed both in the Christmas story and in the Passion accounts. 

       Believers have been conditioned over the centuries to find peace and glory easily in the Nativity narrative.  The innocence of Mary, the kindness of Joseph, the couple’s obedience to an Imperial decree, the warmth of the stabled animals, the sudden burst of angels, the reverence of the shepherds, the adoration of the Magi – all these elements contribute to the greeting card gladness associated with Christmas.  Yet modern man looks at Bethlehem from the perspective of two thousand years of faith.  Modern man knows how the story is going to turn out.  Jesus’ first worshippers must have been severely challenged to discover the Divine in the all too human.  Ancient gods and even the ancient God Himself were not to be found in stables or in quiet villages or in swaddling clothes.  Ancient gods and goddesses dwelt on Mount Olympus, surrounded by antique beauty.  They lived in the temples along the Nile protected by larger-than-life architecture.  Even YHWH was to be found in the Inner Sanctum of the Jerusalem temple, honored by drapery and pillars and vigils lamps.  Finding God in the ordinary was never the expectation of the ancient world.  The newborn in the Judean hay trough was a real test of faith.

       Clearly, if the birth of Christ was a test of faith, then the passion and death of Christ would be an ordeal even for most dedicated disciple.  The very idea of a god is someone who is beyond the warp and woof of every day life – beyond stables and beyond public disgrace.  God by definition is expected to be transcendent, awe-inspiring, majestic.  Moses had to remove his shoes to approach God in the burning bush.  Ussah was struck dead when he reached out to steady even the Ark of the Covenant.  Even the high priest was allowed within the Holy of Holies only once during the year.  During Holy Week all these notions of the grandeur of the God are dashed against the scourging pillar, the wooden cross and the stone-cold tomb.  In the popular mind, God simply does not lower himself, empty himself, demean himself to accept disgrace, to endure suffering, to hang with thieves, to die abandoned.  God should be above all that.  Yet this is precisely what the Son of God did for mankind. 

       The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, accepted first of all a human nature in the womb of Mary.  He became a man like us in all things but sin.  Furthermore, he emptied himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to death on a cross.  By doing this, Jesus did not actually lower himself;  rather he took human nature and human suffering and raised them up to a higher level.  His Good News was that an ordinary human life like the one he lived out in Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jerusalem could be salvific.  His Good News was that suffering and even death, which scandalized many through the centuries, could be turned into a saving grace.  Christ did not lower himself; Christ rather exalted mankind, raising the sum and substance of human life – the birthing, the living, the dying – to new levels of excellence.  No longer does man have to turn to burning bushes or to Olympian heights to discover God.  Since Christ, the manner is ordinary and God may be found in time as well as in eternity, in life as well as after death, in suffering and humiliation as well as in achievement and celebration.  In Christ, peace and glory are brought close and made available to all.       COMPLETE

       If one can believe the conservative web logs on the internet, every priest in Christendom will soon be offering the old Tridentine Latin Mass in parish churches and private oratories throughout the known world.  Episcopal permission be damned as celebrants don their maniples and join their thumbs and index fingers in deference to the Sacred Species.  In spite of the reputation for traditionalism that the Quiet Corner has willingly fostered over the decades, the author is little attracted to a revival of the liturgical practices of his youth.  I was twenty-four years old when the Mass switched from Latin into English and still in my twenties when the Novus Ordo of Pope Paul VI was fully implemented with parish altars reversed.  Considering that I attended the old Latin Mass every day of my seminary years and that the Canon was still in Latin when I said my first Mass, the old Mass has held no interest for me. 

       If I might adjust a phrase from Chesterton, the trouble with the new Mass is not that it has been tried and found wanting, it really hasn’t been tried at all.  The new rite of Pope Paul VI was introduced to the world precisely at a time when Western civilization was relaxing all its traditions and customs.   Everything from marriage to manners and not just the Mass has suffered in the last forty years.  People forgot the rules and embraced the exceptions as their criteria for action.  The ritual for the Mass became a backdrop for puppet shows, interactive readings, balloons, birthday cakes, basketballs and the occasional ballerina.  The very notion of ritual – repeated behavior – gave way to innovation – a new gimmick every week.  Consequently the new Mass itself, the New Order of Mass promulgated by Pope Paul, was left untapped.  Since the authentic rite of the Mass remained ignored, the supporting actions of the Mass were free to exalt supposed relevance over neglected ritual.  Gold chalices and silver patens gave way to ceramic goblets and straw baskets.  The organ yielded to the guitar.  Roman copes and Gothic chasubles were replaced by Mexican ponchos and third world stoles.   Panis Angelicus capitulated toThe Whole World in His Hands.  Everything was very folksy -- which is exactly why the Tridentine Mass now evokes nostalgic appeal among many.  People remember the old Latin Mass as being very majestic, very grand, very triumphant.  Yet was it as regal as some fondly recall?

       The Tridentine Mass for most of its history was not the dialogue Mass of the late fifties and early sixties.  Nor was every Tridentine Mass a solemn high celebration.  In most parishes parishioners knelt with their faces in their missals or their fingers on their beads, while the priest quietly offered prayers and supplications on their behalf to a God who was somewhere out in the middle distance beyond the marble and the frescoes.  The old Mass was genuinely an act of faith in which most participation was interior.  The well-meaning but often abused active participation of today – presentation of gifts, signs of peace, lay readings, general intercessions, Communion in the hand and under both Species, even concelebration – was unknown. 

       Unfortunately these ancient but recently restored forms of participation overwhelmed the basic new rite itself.  The fundamental rubrics have been neglected while the participatory parts have been over-indulged.  Rather than resuscitate the old Tridentine Mass, the New Order Mass of Paul VI should finally be allowed to see the light of day.  Cross and candles, incense and holy water, books and bells, genuflections and bows, gestures and vestments, ambience and appointments, even Greek and Latin acclamations, can be employed with equal reverence and equal effect in the new rite just as in the old rite.  Nothing was drearier than the Tridentine Holy Week observances before Pope Pius XII revised their rituals in the 1950s – lonely clergy processing and praying in empty churches at the crack of dawn.   These Tridentine holy days were more somnolent than solemn.  Old did not mean better.  The glory and grandeur that the Christian world will experience on this Easter Sunday can be echoed every Sunday and, at least faintly, even on weekdays if the new rite is embraced with faith, respect, compliance and an  extra candle stick or two.   

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       Sometime in the 1960s a news item appeared indicating that in the event of nuclear war in Europe Pope Paul VI would take refuge in Quebec City, Canada, assured of a welcome and warm reception in that most Catholic of North American cities.  Older visitors to that French-Canadian province can well recall when clerical cassocks and religious habits were as common on Quebec’s streets as in its churches. Sadly the faith has fallen on hard times north of the border as the following news release reveals:  The government of the Canadian province of Quebec has begun paying for the abortions of more than 45,000 women with taxpayer funds after a judge forced the province in August to reimburse women who had abortions at private abortion facilities. Quebec Superior Court Justice Nicole Benard ruled in his decision last year that the women should not have been forced to pay for the abortions even though they got them at private abortion businesses rather than public facilities. That's because the Quebec Health Insurance Act entitles women getting abortions to public funding of them.  From pilgrimages to Ste Anne de Beaupre to the public funding of abortions – how the mighty have fallen. 

       Canada is not alone in its fall from grace.  Many in Ireland are not far behind in their repudiation of traditional Catholicism.  And much of the Netherlands, which was once contemporary Catholicism’s second largest source of missionaries, has long ago sold its soul to hedonist attractions.  Even Portugal totters on the brink of legalized abortion.  Sadly, readers do not have to cross the border nor cross the sea to discover startling examples of loss of faith.  A letter published recently in the Warwick Beacon in response to a prior letter submitted by me regarding same-sex marriage deserves a reading.  The author has unwittingly and blatantly summarized the secular individualism that has seized the heart and mind of so many of our contemporaries.  Read it and weep.

       The Rev. John Kiley's letter (Marriage: A mutual effort of man and woman, Feb. 27, 2007) reminds me of a most beautiful autumn morning in 1967. While walking to Mass in New York City, I surprised myself by asking, "Do I really want to go?" – whereupon I turned around, returned to my apartment, and forgot all about the faith I'd been born into. No anger, no recriminations: it simply no longer served me.  In a similarly graceful pivot, my own personal agenda would be better served now by turning my back on Father Kiley's letter, cooking up some hot chocolate, and getting on with my day. It would be so much easier to deny the moral imperative I'm feeling to identify his letter for what it is: unloving, and potentially very harmful.  To the best of my recollection, Holy Mother Church is not in agreement with Father's contention that "marriage is first and foremost about sexuality." Although procreation had long been regarded as its chief raison d'etre, after Vatican II, the Catholic view of marriage was elevated to a loving union of souls. However, I recognize that it would be very difficult to make a chink in all the dogmatic assumptions presented in Father Kiley's letter, especially its de fide cornerstone: that only a man and a woman can "complete … enhance … and bring one another to the fullness of their respective personalities."  These are pretty-sounding words – "noble," even. (The Reverend frequently uses this word “noble” to strengthen his argument.) But the question remains: By what authority are we to believe this is true? The arrogance of this presupposition, and the many other even crueler ones that follow, strikes me as untouchably bottomless, hellishly so. Like so many other mental-syntactical constructs that have been programmed into "the faithful," these judgments find no correspondence in reality. In real life, love is love, the one and only undying truth. And irrespective of its anatomical expression, love begets love. The love and commitment of gay married couples is demonstrably every bit as real and true and God-blessed as its heterosexual counterpart. I offer no scripture, no pontifical pronouncements, to back this up – only my openhearted observation.

Indeed no Scripture, no pontifical pronouncements, no tradition – just private feeling, individual inclination and personal opinion.   Every man his own moral theologian.   Sunday’s Gospel will celebrate the institution of the Sacrament of Penance.  Meanwhile society’s sense of sin erodes briskly.

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       Any curious person picking up the Christian Scriptures and reading them with an open mind must be struck the prominent role that St. Peter holds throughout the Gospels, Acts and various Letters that constitute the New Testament.  Sometimes the citations regarding St. Peter are very positive, as when Jesus Christ uniquely blesses Simon Peter after the apostle’s celebrated profession of faith:  “Blessed are you, Simon, son of John…”  Some references to St. Peter are honestly negative, for example when an agitated Christ accuses, “Get behind me, Satan!”  or when St. Paul recalls confronting St. Peter “to his face” regarding the observance of the old Mosaic.  But the shear volume of references to St. Peter must never be overlooked.  Surely this man was uniquely prominent in the mind and writings of the early Christian community and, happily, has remained so in the life of the Roman Catholic Church.

       Along with his brother Andrew and his co-workers James & John, St. Peter was the first apostle called by Jesus.  Less known St. Andrew is later identified as “Simon Peter’s brother.”  With the same James and John, St. Peter is privileged to witness the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor.  When Jesus is perceived walking on the waters, it is St. Peter who takes his chances in walking out toward the Master.  It is St. Peter who inquires about the man born blind, “Who sinned…?”  and St. Peter who retrieves the temple tax from the fish’s mouth.  St. Peter wants to know how often he must forgive his bother, “…seven times?”  St. Peter is the one whose mother-in-law is cured of a fever and St. Peter is the one who demands an explanation concerning the blind leading the blind.  St. Peter wants to know what is in store of those who have left all to follow Jesus.  Again St. Peter points out the withered fig tree and he is surprised when Jesus inquires about who has touched his garments effecting a cure.  St. Peter alone of the disciples has his name changed from Simon.  St. Peter, along with St. John, is commissioned to prepare the final Passover supper and St. Peter questions Jesus as he washes the disciples’ feet.  All four Gospels record the aforementioned confession of St. Peter’s faith and sadly all four Gospels record the denial of Christ by St. Peter.  When Jesus rises from the grave, he entrusts Mary Magdalene with the news of his resurrection which was to be reported to “Peter and the other disciples.”  St. Peter was accorded the privilege of being the first to enter the empty tomb.  After Christ returned to the Father, St. Peter preached the first Church sermon on Pentecost and he worked the first Church miracle, healing the cripple on his way to the Temple.  St. Paul was intent on meeting St. Peter to lend validity to his own ministry.  During the last supper and during the post-Resurrection meals, most of the dialogue takes place between Christ and St. Peter.  In this Sunday’s Gospel, St. Peter is explicitly and solely commissioned to feed Christ’s sheep and to strengthen his brothers.   All of these citations are generously scattered throughout all four Gospels. 

       After the Resurrection the apostolic band was scattered all throughout the Mediterranean world.  The authors of the Gospels all had their own constituencies with their own differing localities, readerships and traditions.  Yet St. Peter dominates the apostolic activity in all four Gospel accounts.  His confession of faith in Jesus Christ as Messiah is a watershed in each of the Gospels.  In all four Gospels many weighty matters of ministry are entrusted to St. Peter alone.  Clearly, the place of honor that St. Peter held in the early Church and in the Gospels is a reflection of the status accorded him by Jesus himself during the Master’s public life.  The respect granted St. Peter by the first Christians, following the lead of Christ, matured into the office of Peter that Catholic Christians hold dear today in the words and work of our Holy Father, the Pope, the Bishop of Rome.  A later pontifical title, Vicar of Christ, while not ancient is nonetheless accurate in summing up the office of Peter.

       The Papal office of unique authority, collegial yet definitive, did not evolve from the Christian community’s need for organization.  Rather the office of Pope descends from the explicit will of Christ who pledged unfailing legitimacy and unerring guidance to this Church through St. Peter’s successors.  St. Peter truly is the rock on which the continuing Church of Christ remains and endures.   COMPLETE

      For over sixty years my family home has been directly across the street from Cold Spring Park in Woonsocket’s fashionable North End.  The eponymous spring no longer supplies water to area residents and the flower beds of my youth now blend with acres of lawn.  The athletic fields have improved vastly and the paths and roadways are neatly paved.  Alas, four young men recently and tragically crashed through the wrought iron fence that surrounds the property, three of them dying when their vehicle struck a tree.  Since that sad event, a shrine has evolved at the foot of the tree that marked their final moments.  Vigil lights, photographs, poems, teddy bears, crosses and angel paraphernalia commemorate their dreadful end.  Other recent tragic and pre-mature deaths, locally and nationwide, have been similarly commemorated.   May they all rest in peace.

       Shrines at the point of death have long been popular in Europe.  Flowered crosses are seen along many a European highway indicating someone’s heartbreaking demise through an automobile accident.  Nearer to home, the Station fire in West Warwick has produced a veritable sanctuary of vigil lights and floral displays testifying to the loss of life there.   Elsewhere in the area, telephone poles into which cars have crashed with lives lost have been turned into private oratories where the bereaved may express their disappointment and their discouragement.

       Mourning the dead is a natural human instinct, certainly not limited to Christians.  Every culture has built up some mythology regarding death and dying. The frequently visited catacombs in Rome indicate the early Christians’ respect for the dead.  The churches of Christendom with their votive plaques and memorial inscriptions signify later generations’ concerned for the faithful departed.  And of course our Catholic cemeteries, as well as cemeteries in general, imply an enduring reverence for those who have gone before.

       Until recently Catholics articulated their grief in mostly sacramental, that is, church-oriented ways.  Catholics expected prayers at a wake, a funeral Mass, and burial in consecrated ground.  They lit candles, sent spiritual bouquets, had month’s mind Masses offered, and requested contributions to their parish church as a tribute their loved ones.  Maybe a chalice or a stole was donated to a missionary in their name.  And, most of all, people actually prayed for the dead “…that they might be loosed from their sins.”   Clearly, grief was expressed through very church-centered customs.

       But lately some Americans, including some Catholics, have taken a decidedly secular bent in their respect for the dead.  Biographical videos of the deceased are most popular.  Wakes and their prayers are often “respectfully omitted.”  The prospect of a funeral Masses can be an embarrassment to those left behind if few family members go to church anyway.  Some prayers at the grave side often satisfy the contemporary survivor.  Sometimes cremated remains fail to make it into consecrated ground.  The eulogy, of course, has become the premier tribute to the dead in our secularized society.  Citing the deceased’s fondness for television or ability on the golf course or another familiar recollection might temporarily relieve the tension experienced by a grieving family.  But in the end these tender accolades can prove misleading.  They clearly fail to introduce the bereaved to any ultimate consideration of death and life after death.  Yet, as was observed at the beginning, people still need to mourn.  The elaborate roadside shrines bedecked with vigil lights and plaques purchased at a card store are an indication of some deeper compulsion to express regret and possibly even hope on behalf of a loved one.    

       Non-believers who choose secular mourning rites have already decided that there is no hope beyond the grave.  Memories, fond or otherwise, are all they have left.  But Catholics who favor a video memorial or a personality-over-theology eulogy or a graveside “service” deny their own traditional beliefs in redemption, judgment, resurrection, heaven, hell, purgatory and especially in the “eternal life” mentioned in this Sunday’s Gospel.  Secular rites alone look to the past and promise nothing.  The authentic Rite of Christian Burial looks to the future and promises everything.           COMPLETE

       One particularly happy phrase that Pope Benedict XVI employs in his postsynodal exhortation “Sacramentum Caritatis” is the expression “Eucharistic consistency.”  The Holy Father reasons that what the reception of Holy Communion signifies at the altar step must accompany the sincere communicant out of the church and into his daily life.  When a Catholic stands at the altar and extends his hands for the Body of Christ, that Catholic is declaring that he intends to be fully one with the God that he is about to receive.  That same Catholic is also proclaiming that he is one with all those fellow worshippers who are at Mass that weekend.  He is one with the elderly couple to whom the priest administers the sacrament while they remain in their pew.  He is one with the mother who approaches the altar with a baby in her arms. He is one with the school child who has just made her First Communion.  He is one with the police woman, still in uniform, who has just completed her night shift. 

        When the Catholic receives Communion standing at the edge of the sanctuary, he affirms that he is one with our Holy Father, the Pope, who is celebrating the same Mass at some basilica in Rome.  He is also asserting that he is one with his local bishop who is presiding at a Confirmation Mass at one of the diocese’s many parish churches.  The Catholic who communicates at Mass is also acknowledging that he is one with all those millions of Catholics throughout the world who will receive the same Body of Christ in their parish churches and locals chapels.  And when a Catholic consumes the Sacred Host at Mass, he avows that he is one with all those saints, prelates, doctors, theologians and laity who have embraced, relished and defended the Eucharist down through the ages.

       Yes, the devout reception of Holy Communion is a personal and public pronouncement that the communicant is one with his fellow parishioners, one with the Church’s hierarchy, one with the worldwide Catholic community, one with all the believers down through history.  Now this is fine as long as one is standing respectfully in front of his pastor consuming the Sacred Species that he has just received from the priest’s hands.  But here is where the Pope’s call for “Eucharistic consistency” enters the picture.  It is all well and good to be united with the Pope and the bishops and the universal Church and all the saints at Communion time, but how consistent is that unity once one has driven out of the parish parking lot?

       Does that communicant who was genuinely sincerely as he returned to his pew after receiving the Body and Blood of Christ give a second thought