Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 345

Solemn and Sacred Transformations

Some months ago I was down to take a wedding on a Saturday. The couple had been prepared by the deacon. The groom was from a nominally Catholic family, the girl was unbaptized.



So the wedding party turned up for the rehearsal on the Friday and, as usual, people were in high spirits, but in this case there was some rolling of eyes and poor behavior from some of the non Catholics. I was told by one of the assistants that they were mocking the Catholic Church and making light of what was going on.



So, as I conducted the rehearsal I explained about the Catholic view of marriage and discussed God's love and our human loves and what the different elements of the ceremony actually meant. Then, the next day, as the wedding began I welcomed everyone and explained that we call this ceremony the "solemnization of marriage" and that, while it is a joyful event, it is also a solemn religious ritual. I explained that God is present here and I invited them to join in with the prayers and treat the ceremony as solemnly as possible so that it would be as beautiful and meaningful as possible for the bride and groom.



The marriage went on, and I noticed that everyone actually responded. People who had been casual and slouchy were standing erect and tall and silent. They had put their cameras away. They knelt reverently and listened carefully to the readings and homily. They were caught up in the ceremony--and this was especially noticeable amongst the non-Catholics.



Then when it came to the blessing of the rings the ten year old boy stepped forward with the rings pinned to a pillow and he was weeping freely. I looked across and saw that one of the beefy groomsmen was also wiping away a tear. The matron of honor was weeping and so was another bridesmaid. Now I know people always cry at weddings, but this was quite extraordinary and I sensed that what was making them weep was a real and tangible presence of God--and that their awareness of his presence was empowered by the fact that they took my words about the solemnity of the ritual seriously.



How beautiful it is, and how necessary, therefore for all of our sacraments to be celebrated with sacred solemnity. You see, what happens is that sacred solemnity and the formality of ritual touches placed deep within the human heart that cannot be touched in any other way. Ritual--with it's symbolic actions and solemn words--helps us connect with the places that are too deep for ordinary words and actions. When a person attends Mass this is why he should dress better and carry himself better and listen to the words and recite the words with suitable solemnity and dignity--because all of this connects his conscious mind with a better person than he knew he was--a sacred solemn person--a person who is usually buried within the hurly burly and shallowness of everyday life.



This is why our liturgy should be beautiful, because beauty is the language of worship. This is why our music should be sacred and solemn. This is why we should spend money on building beautiful churches. This is why we should train our altar servers and lectors and eucharistic ministers to serve with dignity and solemnity and a sacred manner.



But we have forgotten all of this. Our grandparents and great grandparents understood it, but we have been caught up in the tyranny of utilitarianism. Our churches are mere auditoria. Our music all has to be 'meaningful' and that usually means sentimental and trite. Our religion (because we have forgotten the supernatural) has become a mere fellowship and a method to 'make the world a better place.' All of this driven by the need for everything to be useful and cost effective and efficient. "Oh, the vulnerability of beauty in a world of useful things!"



I will always remember the tears of that ten year old ring bearer and the tears of the congregation at that wedding. It took non Catholics responding naturally and openly to the liturgy to remind me what it is all about, and to give me the reminder that through the sacred and the solemn we are transformed at a deeper level than we can imagine.

St Lawrence

Full Participation

How many times have I heard priests exclaim their enthusiasm for 'full participation' at Mass. It is a kind of modern Catholic mantra. Indeed, not only a Catholic mantra, it has become an ideological slogan before which all must bow. So, in the name of 'full participation' we have overturned 2000 years of church architectural tradition and built round churches, fan shaped churches, churches that are auditoria, churches that are circus tents, churches that are stadiums--all in an attempt to get as many people as close as possible to the altar as if proximity to the altar constitutes full participation.



The tradition of sacred music has fallen to this revolutionary creed as well. Down with Gregorian chant and classic hymns and the venerable music of the liturgy and up with tacky songs with sentimental semi heretical lyrics. More often than not this music is imposed on the people. Every kind of secular style of music has entered the sanctuary in an attempt to get 'full participation' and all of it has been imposed by well meaning ideologues--and the irony of it is that these are the same people who claim to be democratic and 'listening to the voice of the people of God'.



And has it worked? I have celebrated Mass at churches where an eager liturgy director (usually an ex-nun or priest) waves his arms about and brings the energy and fake enthusiasm of a Broadway dancer to his task and still the hymnbooks stay in the pew rack, the arms remain folded on the chest, the lips remain firmly closed and the expression of bored frustration remains stamped on the faces of the faithful. I've seen the priests celebrate Mass with the 'game show host' style of liturgy--all false bonhomie and dumbed down cheerfulness--and his efforts are still met with solid, silent animosity. "Do what you like Father. You won't get me to open my mouth."



After experiencing my own frustration at expecting congregations to sing hymns I am beginning to come around to their point of view. Let us stand things on their head and really listen to the 'voice of the faithful' and ask ourselves whether they might actually be right. Maybe their instincts to be silent at Mass and not sing or wave their arms about or hug people are right. Maybe they know more about it in their blissful ignorance than we do with all our good ideas about 'full participation'.



Maybe what the faithful actually want is not wonderful orgasmic hymns and breath taking music. Maybe what they want is a quiet, dignified Mass with a simple, skilled choir or schola. Maybe what they want--even if they don't know it--is a Mass where they simply watch and pray and listen and wonder at the mystery of what is going on at the altar. Maybe they are 'fully participating' in this way and who am I to judge? So I am moving increasingly to the position that I will let the people do what they want at Mass. I will encourage them and direct them, but I will not dictate my views or my tastes and impose them. I will simply say the black and do the red and preach the gospel and try to be a priest not an entertainer.



I also notice how few people in the congregation come out to extra meetings and seminars and services and lectures and Bible studies and all these other goodies we lay on. The attendance is very poor. Where is the 'full participation'? Well, maybe again the faithful have it right and they are going out from Mass on Sundays to try to live their faith in the workplace, at home, at school and wherever the path of life leads them that week.



If I am right, then suddenly I understand "full participation at Mass" I am there fully and completely and attentively in body, mind and Spirit. I am caught up with the action of the Mass and the transaction between earth and heaven. My whole being is participating in what is going on and as I receive my Lord--Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity--I am fully participating in that sublime and contemplative action of Grace.



Then as I go out into the world, by that same grace, my life is transformed and I am a light in the darkness and the grace of the Son becomes incarnate in my life and I fully participate in a whole life that fully participates in the life of Christ--and if this is what is happening a far, far greater thing is taking place than some priest and music director forcing me to sing Eagles' Wings for the umpteenth time.

Caitlin O'Rourke on the Beach

Guest blogger Caitlin O'Rourke is a member of St Bridget's, Church, High Dudgeon, New Jersey. Caitlin is ten years old.





I didn't want to go but Mom said since Mrs Florsheim invited me I should and I don't really like the beach that much because the sand is always too hot and it burns your feet and with my red hair I always get sunburned and you wouldn't believe how much more my freckles come out and I hate that but I went anyway since Flora is my best friend and her big brother Arnold was taking a friend and you'll never believe it but it was Jimmy Pochowski and I was so mad when I found out but it was too late to say no so I had to go anyway and all summer at the pool Jimmy kept calling me Fatty Catty and laughing at my swimming suit that Mom makes me wear because she says its modest and I wouldn't want to wear a bikini anyway because Papa says most women wearing bikinis look like a set of hams that have been strung up and hung out to dry on stilts and once he was talking with Uncle Mortimer who said he always wondered why the women he wished would wear a bikini at the beach never do and the ones he wished wouldn't wear a bikini always do and isn't that just too bad said Mom when she heard them talking on the porch and told them to mind their language because I was listening but I didn't mind because I think they were funny and I wouldn't wear a bikini if you paid me to so then Jimmy sat in the back of the van all the way to the beach and played games with Arnold and was okay but when we got to the beach they were being bad the whole time and then pretending they were being good to the grown ups and I hate that when Jimmy smiles and says YesSir and YesMa'am and they all smile and think he's wonderful so anyway Flora and I found out that they were going to go swimming late at night without having permission and so we listened and when they went sneaking out the back door of the beach house we followed them to see what they were going to do and you will never believe it but they took off their swimming trunks and ran down to the beach naked to swim so then I had this idea so me and Flora snuck down and stole their towels and swimming trunks and ran back to the house and sneaked in the back door and the grown ups were on the front porch with the lights on and so we locked the back door so they couldn't get in and they went around the front and we didn't dare watch but we heard Arnold asking his Mom for a towel where they were hiding behind the side of the house and then the grownups saw what happened and we were sorry we did it the next day because Mrs Florsheim told us off at breakfast but Mr Florsheim didn't care because I could see he was trying not to laugh but we were still sorry and went to confession and I think the priest has a cold because after I told him he did a kind of snorting noise and I think maybe he was sneezing because I don't think a priest should laugh at your sins but he should be serious and give you a good penance now what is really bad is that everyone at school will know and they will laugh at me because I have seen Jimmy Pochowski naked but not really because it was dark and we were a long way away and I only saw his backside and that doesn't really matter because everyone has one of those.

Romanesque

The Abbey church of San Antimo

Wave Walking

I remember as an Anglican priest being astonished to discover that the story of Jesus walking on the water had been omitted from the Sunday lectionary. The CofE may have put it back in the meantime, but I learned that it was omitted because the story was simply too incredible for modern people to believe. (By the way, the distortion of the faith through the distortion of liturgy within the Anglican Church is a topic that has been much ignored...when I was an Anglican they were doing all sorts of weird things to promote their modernist agenda within and through the manipulation of the lectionary, the prayer book, 'alternative liturgies',  the lists of saints etc. but that's another topic altogether...)





What has always amused me about this blatant historicism is the idea that first century people really had no problem believing the story, or for that matter, for the first nineteen centuries of the church people were so dumb that they thought walking on the water was pretty easy to believe, but suddenly now in the twenty and twenty first centuries we modern people know so much more that we know such things don't happen.





The other thing that is extremely dumb about the modernists is that the story of Jesus walking on the water comes in Matthew's gospel right after the feeding of the 5,000. So they take the feeding of the 5,000 and downgrade it by saying "isn't it wonderful that the example of the little boy sharing his lunch prompted everyone else to share theirs too!" But they can't really find any way of explaining away the miracle of Jesus walking on the water so they just cut it out altogether. "We now know that such a thing could never have happened, and it will make it so difficult for non-Christians to accept the faith, so perhaps it would be best if we were to simply leave it out of the lectionary--the way we did with that psalm that talks about bashing babies heads against the rocks..."





Furthermore, the modernists love to 'de-mythologize' the miracle stories and try to suck out the theological truth but leave the historical aspect on one side as something 'unbelievable to modern people'. I am all for pulling out the theological aspect of the gospel stories, but even that aspect of the story of Jesus walking on the water is ignored by the modernists. Why, do you think, when one of their hobbies is pulling out the theological meaning, do they ignore the theological meaning of Jesus walking on the water?





Here's why: because Jesus walking in the water is a direct fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies that reveal Jesus to be the Son of God. Consider Psalm 77:





I will consider all your works

   and meditate on all your mighty deeds." 13 Your ways, God, are holy.

   What god is as great as our God?

14 You are the God who performs miracles;

   you display your power among the peoples.

15 With your mighty arm you redeemed your people,

   the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. 16 The waters saw you, God,

   the waters saw you and writhed;

   the very depths were convulsed.

17 The clouds poured down water,

   the heavens resounded with thunder;

   your arrows flashed back and forth.

18 Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind,

   your lightning lit up the world;

   the earth trembled and quaked.

19 Your path led through the sea,

   your way through the mighty waters,

   though your footprints were not seen.

Or consider Isaiah 43





 I am the LORD, your Holy One, 

   Israel's Creator, your King."

 16 This is what the LORD says—

   he who made a way through the sea,

   a path through the mighty waters,





In the Old Testament the Lord God Creator was the one who had mastery over the chaos of the deep. In the creation story he separated the waters above and the waters below. He commanded the flood through which Noah was saved, he opened the waters of the Red Sea to bring the children out of slavery into the promised land. These Old Testament passages from Isaiah and the Psalms reveal the Lord to be the Master of creation, and Christ through both the miracle of the Feeding of the 5,000 and walking on the water reveals himself to be the Creator God.





That this is so is unlocked in the final words of the story: "Those who were in the boat said, 'Truly you are the Son of God.'" Suddenly the whole thing is very clear--the stories of Jesus feeding the 5,000 and walking on the water are put together by Matthew in the same chapter for a reason. The reason is to attest to the true identity of our Lord as the Son of God.





The disciples saw the miracles and believed that he was the Son of God. If you reject the miracles can you still accept that Jesus is the Son of God? I don't think so. I think we are to accept the smaller miracles in order to be directed to the great miracle which is the Incarnation of the Son of God of the Blessed Virgin Mary.





This shows us the ultimate heresy of the modernists. We thought it was just a dumb and cowardly thing to explain away the miracles. We might have been inclined to excuse it because they were weak in the faith and perhaps a bit embarrassed in front of their intellectual colleagues. But it's more important than that. In denying the miracles of Christ, they also deny the great miracle, and it is no co-incidence that the same modernist theologians and Bible scholars who deny the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 and seek to eliminate the miracle of Christ walking on the water also go on to deny his divinity.





When is the rest of the Christian church going to wake up and realize that these scholars are not just finding miracles a bit hard to believe--they are actually denying the essential truths of the Christian faith.

Silver and Gold I Have None

Do you remember the story of Peter and John in the temple? A cripple comes up and begs for money and Peter replies, "I don't have silver and gold, but what I do have I will give you-- In the name of Jesus of Nazareth rise up and walk."



In pondering how to help the poor it seems to me that I am helpless. I (and my parish) really do not have the resources to engage in a charity project that could possible meet even a little bit of the enormous need in our community. Oh, yes, we do what we can, but it is so small compared to the great need. So what shall I do?



Then on the drive home from hospital it hit me. I was called out after Mass today to anoint a man who had just had a stroke. I went and anointed him and then later in the afternoon the family asked me to return. He had taken a turn for the worse. "Would I come to say the prayers of commendation at death?"



So I went and it was very emotional and beautiful. A committed Catholic family gathered around the deathbed doing the right thing. Anointing their loved one and handing him over the  heavenly Father. I was able to be there being a priest--doing only what a priest can do.



It was on the way home that the phrase, "Silver and gold I have none" kept echoing through my brain and I realized that the Holy Spirit was speaking to me about the poor. I don't have the resources to help them as I would wish. However, what do I have? I have the same apostolic faith of Peter and James. I can best serve them as a priest.



Most of them aren't even Catholic, but I can still best serve them as a priest--not as a social worker or a soup kitchen organizer or a career advisor or a housing supervisor. I can work with all the other people who do such a great job helping the poor with material needs, but that is not my job. I can co-operate with those who provide help, and promote their work and motivate my lay people to continue that work. But I can't do that.



Instead I will serve them as a priest. It's all I can do. It's all Peter and John could do.

London Riots

Riots have broken out in London again. Last night and tonight organized gangs are rampaging through parts of the city burning and looting. Who's to blame?



Everybody's to blame. That's who. In the present economic climate many people are suffering with the loss of jobs, the loss of savings and the loss of their homes and security. Why is that? Because of greed at every level of society--greed amongst the middle classes, but also greed amongst the lower classes the upper classes.



Greed amongst a lazy, dependent underclass of people who won't work and feel entitled to more and more and more free handouts. Greed amongst the 'nice' middle class people who invest their money is shady get rich quick schemes. Greed amongst 'nice' rich people who devise the schemes, take usury to vile and obscene extremes and rake in the cash as fast as they can. Greed amongst money lenders and property speculators and stock market 'geniuses'. Greed amongst those who will use the financial crises that come along every ten years to use their already huge wealth to buy up everything they can at a cheap price--robbing everyone they can of the true value.



A society worm eaten with greed. Greed where every store tries to offer their goods at the cheapest possible prices and every housewife and shopper covets a 'bargain' so much and cheerfully degrades their lives for yet another cheap trinket purchased not because he needs it, but because it's cheap. Greed where manufacturers cut corners and offer nasty, poor quality goods with a veneer of 'quality'. Greed where consumers buy such junk. Greed woven into our children's worldview. Greed where everybody is grabbing whatever they can however they can.



The problem with a society fueled by greed is that lurking beneath the sin of greed is always violence. Violence because I can only have all the goodies I want at the expense of someone else. If I have it you can't have it. I will have my cheap consumer goods, but just don't tell me about the child labor, the sweatshops, the slave labor level of wages and the rape of the environment in order to get me all my cheap goodies. All of this is a form of violence, and the riots in London are simply an outward expression of the reality of our Western society--a society that is thoroughly materialistic and therefore atheistic.



Pope John Paul II said there were two materialistic atheistic world systems and that both would eventually collapse in on themselves. The first was communism. The second was unrestrained capitalism. The first is built on power. The second is built on greed.



Do you see the burning shops and police cars in the streets of London? Do you see the gangs wearing hoods and masks rampaging through the streets bashing into banks, burning stores and looting shopping malls? It is a prophetic image. It shows us who we are, and we had better take a good, long, hard look.



The news shows rioting gangs of lawless youths burning and pillaging and taking whatever they want and no one can stop them. But I see behind their ugly faces, their frightening masks and their hoods and weapons a whole society of people who do the very same thing they do, but with business suits instead of hoodies, masks of polite smiles and good manners instead of balaclavas, and the weapons of lawsuits and legislation and corporate lawyers and contracts to force their way on the world.



What's wrong with the world? G.K.Chesterton answered the question: "I am." For I too am greedy. Greedy with my time. Greedy with my talents. Greedy with my money. Greedy with my life, and if this is true of me it is true of every other person and the only answer to this desperate human condition is....



...true conversion of life.

The Problem of the Poor

She was sitting under the porch of the parish office, and asked if she could sleep there overnight. She was in her thirties, seemed to be in very poor health and said if we didn't let her stay there she would sell her body to get a room for the night.



Our parish is actually in a poor part of town. Across the street are old hotels and the stories of what goes on there are real bad. We're right on the interstate. People travel in and stop here to feed their addictions.



How are we to help the poor? In our country it is so complicated. Each individual has hugely complex problems. They have health problems, relationship problems, addiction problems, mental health problems, family problems. Where does an ordinary parish begin? So we tie in with Catholic charities and the other groups who offer professional help, but even then it is a drop in the ocean.



In a simpler society the help would also be simpler. Do we offer a homeless man a job raking leaves to earn his lunch? Then we come up against health and safety issues, insurance liabilities, infringement on his government entitlements. Do we open up a house for homeless people? In come the health and safety people. In come the government aid agencies with their regulations. In come the hangers on, the drug addicts, the drunks and the prostitutes--all looking for a free handout with no intention of life change.



Do we just keep on handing out money to pay bills, food for the hungry and shelter for the homeless or does that simply fuel the dependency culture?



We're trying  to do our best. We have a weekly food pantry that distributes on Saturday mornings, but the poor need more than food, and I feel helpless. I am, after all, a parish priest--not the head of a soup kitchen or a homeless hostel or a gospel mission. We work with the other caring agencies, but there is simply too much to do and too few resources.

Catholics and Divorce

As a pastor, not one week goes by that I don't have to deal with a broken marriage in some way or other. The amount of time we invest helping people pick up the pieces of their lives, question whether an annulment is possible, go through the procedures and try to make sense of the devastated wasteland that is modern marriage and family life is shocking.



It really is very, very difficult to maintain the Catholic teaching on marriage when the whole societal structure of family life and marriage is disintegrating around us. Take, for just one example, the impossibility of the marriage vows in the face of quick, no fault divorce which is facilitated by voracious lawyers encouraging divorce and agnostic judges who also aren't opposed to divorce.



At one point in our society divorce was a scandal. Decent people just didn't do that. Decent lawyers wouldn't touch divorce cases like decent doctors wouldn't do abortions. It was considered not only immoral, but a crime against marriage and against God. Now the shark lawyers line up and advertise for divorce work. They pride themselves on being 'bulldogs' for their client. A judge in the old days would tell a man or woman to go back to their marriage and not grant them a divorce. Divorced people were social pariahs. They were shunned by family and respectable society. Now, more often than not the divorced person is mollycoddled and treated as a poor victim when, in a good many cases of my experience, they are busy taking their former spouse for every penny they can get.



What is a man or woman to do who wants to be a good Catholic but their spouse walks out on them, gets a quick no fault divorce and ends the marriage? The Church says that person (if the marriage was valid) must spend the rest of his days as a celibate. Is that fair? I know of a situation where the husband and wife are both converts to the faith. In her fifties (after twenty five years of marriage) she walked out to 'find herself'. She claimed he had been unfaithful. Turns out his affair was 'an emotional affair'. He had been chatting with an old high school girlfriend on Facebook. So now, if he wants to remain a good Catholic he's not only had his wife walk out, spread the story throughout the community that he's an adulterer, ruined his good name, taken him for every penny he has, and because he's a Catholic (she's now left the faith) he's also sentenced to celibacy for life.



This is one example. I could multiply it over and over again. In this case the woman seems to be the villain. There are just as many men who are stinkers. The whole Catholic marriage thing (in practice) is extraordinarily complex, and when you add the current re-definition of marriage by the homosexualists it becomes even more bizarre and sick. Of course the whole problem goes back to Humane Vitae and the contraception culture, but that's the stuff for another post.



It seems to me that increasingly the Catholic Church (along with certain conservative Protestant groups) is going to be the only bastion of Christian marriage. The mainstream Protestants have not only compromised on all these issues, but are leading the charge against traditional marriage and family life. Neo-Evangelicals have pretty much caved on divorce and remarriage and over homosexuality and co habitation have adopted a 'don't ask don't tell' policy.



When it comes to pastoral care, how does a Catholic priest deal with couples and families who are in the midst of the mess? The liberal approach is to be loving and kind and welcoming and turn a blind eye to the teachings of the church. The conservative approach is to take a hard line and turn away all those who are 'outside the church'. My own way is first to welcome all and then explain the true teaching of the church and invite them to live it out despite the difficulties, and to provide them with every help and assistance to do so.



Whether they take up the offer is up to them, but at least now they know. Eventually I suppose the Catholic Church will become more and more of a 'sign of contradiction' in our society. Catholics will seem to be like the Amish--following a quaint and archaic way of life which is somewhat admirable, but impossible.



When I'm feeling ornery I say, "Bring it on." Some days I think there's nothing I'd like better than to bid farewell to this tacky, materialistic suburban life,  live in a hermitage, next to a church, grow a long beard, keep silence and say Mass every morning for three old ladies and a few large families who have moved into the community....oh, and write my blog posts every morning.



'Cause I'm not giving up my laptop.