Close but No Kewpie Doll!

Brandon McGinley 

The Prodigal Church Restoring Catholic Tradition  in an Age of Deception 

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS 

Manchester, New Hampshire, Kindle Edition.

    This book captured my attention and promised much in its early pages. Unfortunately to my mind, it did not hold true to its promises. The major problem rests with the couple premises which form the basis for its conclusions. Let me take time to discuss one of those false points of departure!

    Sadly, the author seems to think that one of the reasons for a failed implementation of the teachings of the II Vatican Council in the United States is the old JFK trope about a Catholic Community coming of age through its embrace of the old WASP formula for social and economic success, with a Catholic patina. The author holds, and rightly so, that the Kennedy family was a poor choice to carry the Catholic banner (a devastating mistake). The Age of Deception, as McGinley refers to it, is such because little has happened in the US by way of inculturation in our Catholic world in the US since way before World War II. He appeals to the authority of the eloquent critique of the servant of God Fulton J. Sheen for 1950's and later Catholicism.

    While it is true that the "Camelot" myth weighed heavily in conditioning Catholic secularization or defection from the fullness of Catholic truth, to say that there was not more in play is like pretending to read the actual political scene in 2020 depending solely on the skewed interpretation proffered by the MSM.

    Catholicism's free-fall in Canada, Ireland, Belgium and Holland has had nothing to do with the Kennedy family. Having spent most of my adult life living in the midst of non-American Catholics in various European countries and elsewhere, I cannot see how McGinley's premise is tenable. The poor immigrant wanting to integrate in a protestant world and reach equal status with his neighbors is not the driving force behind much of the rest of the Catholic world's embrace of vapid liturgy, abortion, euthanasia, and moral degradation. Evangelization and catechesis have as surely failed in the German speaking world and not for the reasons the author gives to blame for the emptying of pews and churches across the United States.

     CAVEAT EMPTOR! The book is attractively neoconservative, that is, if you are willing to settle for less than a tuneup of the old jalopy. Let me be clear that the dogfight of recent weeks over whether or not to dump the II Vatican Council and all its works is not my thing. From one point of view the present back and forth makes no more sense than does that #CancelCulture which is tearing down statues in public squares, vandalizing, looting and threatening worse.

    McGinley does not get it. For all the good he says about resetting, recovering, renewing Catholic culture, he has not figured out that the road map is much older, clearer and surer, that the neo-modernist derivative he seems to be flirting with. His facile appeals to "archaeologism" to cancel the wealth of tradition does little more really than condemn him going the route he condemns in no uncertain terms, namely that of the prodigal son's dissipation or dissolution. I am sorry but this book cannot but disappoint.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

  

Heart to Heart with the Immaculata

 

Fest des Unbefleckten Herzens

der Allerseligsten Jungfrau Maria

22. August 2020 - St. Anton, Basel

Sir 24, 23-31

Joh 19, 25-27

Gelobt sei Jesus Christus!

Im Secret der heutigen Messe beten wir so:

“Da wir, Herr, Deiner Majestät das makellose Lamm darbringen, bitten wir, dass jenes göttliche Feuer unsere Herzen entzünde, welches das Herz der seligen Jungfrau Maria auf unaussprechliche Weise entflammt hat.“

Ich erinnere mich noch gut daran, wie mein Heimatbischof in den Vereinigten Staaten, ein Mann mit einem grossen Herzen, fromm und Gottesfürchtig, ein Bild vom Heiligsten Herzen Jesu suchte, welches er drucken lassen wollte, um es an die Gläubigen weiterzugeben für die Feier der Herz-Jesu Thronerhebung in den Familien der Diözese. Mit dieser Aktion und mit vielen anderen ähnlichen suchte er nach Wegen, um den Glauben der Menschen zu erneuern gerade dadurch, dass er beim Gebet in der Familie zu Hause anfing. Die Zeiten haben sich seither gewaltig verändert. Damals traute sich der Bischof nicht, ein klassisches Herz-Jesu-Bild zu verwenden, weil er fürchtete, die Leute könnten sich dadurch nicht angesprochen fühlen. Heute haben wir diese Probleme nicht mehr. Die klassischen Bilder von anno dazumal gefallen sogar der jüngeren Generation (das heisst den unter vierzig-jährigen). Wenn ich mich richtig erinnere, so hat mein Bischof damals, nachdem er viele moderne und abstrakte Bilder begutachtet hatte, sich für ein schönes Herz-Jesu-Gemälde aus dem 18. Jahrhundert entschieden. Er schenkte jedem Haushalt in der Diözese eine Farbkopie von diesem Bild und eine mit einem Bild der Marias mit ihrem unbefleckten Herzen.

Auch wenn unser Herz nicht ein unbeflecktes ist wie dasjenige der Jungfrau Maria, so bitten wir den Herrn heute, an diesem Festtag in besonderer Weise, unsere Herzen mit derselben Liebesglut zu entzünden, mit der das unbefleckte Herz Marias erfüllt war. Mit Nachdruck möchte ich auf die zentrale Bedeutung der Verehrung des unbefleckten Herzens Marias für unseren Glauben hinweisen. Diese Verehrung führt uns mit Sicherheit zum Verständnis der Natur und des Wesens der Kirche und unserer persönlichen Berufung als katholische Christen. Die Menschen unserer Tage meinen, sie könnten die Kirche verstehen aufgrund der Strukturen, ihrer Organigramme der sozialen Einrichtungen und der Hierarchie. Es ist natürlich wahr, dass die sichtbare Struktur der Kirche hilft, ihr inneres Wesen erfahrbar zu machen. Wir können nicht auf die Sichtbarkeit der Kirche verzichten. Aber wir dürfen nie vergessen, dass es ist der Heilige Geist, der im Herzen der Kirche und eben auch im Herzen jedes einzelnen Gläubigen wirkt. Es ist genau dieses Wirken Gottes, seine Gnade, welche den mystischen Leib Christi belebt. Die gesellschaftlichen und hierarchischen Strukturen der Kirche alleine können niemals die Tugend des Glaubens, die tätige Nächstenliebe und die Hoffnung, welche allein in Gott gestillt werden kann, ersetzen. Die Eigenart einer Rede über das Herzen Marias ist vor allem die, dass diese Rede unseren Glauben nährt und belebt. Es steht ausser Zweifel: Die konkreten Strukturen sind absolut notwendig, aber der Weg zu Christus und zum ewigen Heil führt durch das Herzen Marias ins Herz der Getauften um dann im grossen Ozean der Göttlichen Liebe einzutauchen. Alles andere dient und fördert nur diesen inneren Dialog der Liebe.

Der Heilige Lorenzo Giustiniani, (er lebte von 1381 – 1456 und war der erste Patriarch von Venedig) hat den Unterschied zwischen dem Alten und dem Neuen Bund gerade mit dem Begriff des Unbefleckten Herzens Marias behandelt. Er legte grossen Wert darauf, dass das eigentlich akzeptierbare Opfer, dargebracht mit reinem Herzen, nicht dasjenige war, welches im von Menschenhand  und aus Steinen erbauten Tempel dargebracht wird, sondern jenes, welches im Tempel unsers Herzens dargebracht wird, wo unser Herr Jesus Christus in seiner Güte Wohnung genommen hat. Sicher, der Besuch dieser schönen Kirchengebäude schenkt uns viel Trost. Aber diese Gebäude dienen nur insofern sie das geistige Haus unterstützen. In diesem Sinne spricht man von der Kirche als ein aus lebendigen Steinen erbautes Haus. Das Neue Jerusalem aus der Offenbarung des Johannes ist auf dem Fundament der Apostel gebaut und wird erleuchtet von der Gegenwart Gottes, welche die Stadt Gottes erfüllt, die keinen andern Tempel hat als ihren Herrn und Gott.

Kehren wir zurück zum heutigen Fest. Die Schönheit und der Kerngehalt dieses Marienfestes finden wir in der Lesung des heutigen Festes. Die Kirche deutet diesen Vers im 24. Kapitel des Buches Jesus Sirach so, dass sich in Maria, besonders in ihrem unbefleckten Herzen, die Fülle der Weisheit Gottes wohnt:

“Ich bin die Mutter der schönen Liebe und der Gottesfurcht, der Erkenntnis und der heiligen Hoffnung… Die mich aufleuchten lassen, erlangen das ewige Leben.”

Vor kurzem wurde mir in einem Videointerview die Frage gestellt: „Wie können wir die pastoralen Dienste für die Zukunft garantieren in Anbetracht der wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Krise sowie der daraus resultierenden Finanzeinbussen, welche durch den von den zivilen Behörden zur Bekämpfung des COVID-19 Virus verordneten „Lockdown“ entstanden sind?“ Die zuständigen Behörden haben uns während mehr als zwei Monaten alle Aktivitäten in unseren Kirchen und kirchlichen Zentren verboten. Vielleicht hilft uns das nun, leichter über unsere pastoralen Prioritäten nachzudenken und zu entdecken, was für ein gutes Glaubenszeugnis heute notwendig ist. Ist der schöne Kirchturm in der Mitte des Dorfes wirklich so entscheidend? Was bringen uns die demokratischen Strukturen in der Kirche, wenn die Gläubigen keine Messe mehr haben und nicht mehr zur Beichte gehen können? Was hilft die Jugendarbeit den Eltern, wenn diese nicht mehr wissen, dass sie als erste dazu berufen sind, die Herzen ihrer Kinder für die Liebe Gottes zu öffnen. Ist es nicht eher, dass dies besonders durch ein vertrauensvolles Verhältnis zur Jungfrau Maria geschieht? „Die mich aufleuchten lassen, erlangen das ewige Leben.”

Wir können und müssen von einer Glaubenskrise sprechen. Es fehlt das Wissen über den Glauben. Es mangelt an gelebtem Glauben. Viele unterlassen es, die Sonntagsmesse zu besuchen und auch regelmässig zu beichten. Es ist eine traurige Tatsache, dass viele nicht wirklich aus dem Gebet leben, d.h. dass sie den Tag nicht gleich beim Erwachen dem Herrn anvertrauen oder sich zur Zeit des Angelus dreimal täglich kurz dem Herrn zuwenden. Viele danken nicht für das tägliche Essen oder pflegen weder den Rosenkranz noch die Gewissenserforschung vor dem Einschlafen. Wir sollten immer in Gemeinschaft mit der Mutter Gottes leben, unsere Herzen ausgerichtet auf das unbefleckte Herzen Marias: „Die mich aufleuchten lassen, erlangen das ewige Leben.” Ja, das ist die wahre Weisheit.

Ist das für einen „normalen“ Christen eine zu grosse Herausforderung? Wir können es nicht ehrlich behaupten, wenn wir nicht wenigstens eine kleine Anstrengung unternehmen in diese Richtung. Wir müssen wenigstens versuchen, ein solches Leben zu führen und die Irrungen dieser Zeit zu überwinden und alles zu Christus unserem Erlöser zu führen. Vom Herzen Marias zum Heiligsten Herzen des Sohnes und so bis vor den Thron des Allerhöchsten.

 „Die mich aufleuchten lassen, erlangen das ewige Leben.”

Gelobt sei Jesus Christus!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

A truly edifying Biography of the Servant of God Augustine Tolton

 

Sister Caroline HEMESATH 

FROM SLAVE TO PRIEST 

A Biography of the 

Reverend Augustine Tolton 

(1854—1897) First Black American 

Priest of the United States 

With a Foreword by  Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers 

IGNATIUS PRESS    SAN FRANCISCO

Kindle Edition, 2006. 

    It would seem that some times are harder for everyone to be alive, while others weigh especially upon individuals. Our challenge would seem to be not to resign ourselves to our fate terrible or less, but rather to seek the truth and strive for true justice and equal opportunity before the law as best we can, for our own sake, for the sake of those nearest and dearest to us, and as did Father Tolton for the sake of all who cross our paths, especially those who are heavily burdened.

    With a very delicate but perceptive hand, telling the story of the Servant of God and of his family, Sr. Caroline describes the lot of slaves in the United States shortly before and during the Civil War. She draws some very important distinctions, related to place and time, regarding not only the challenges but the almost impossible odds faced by former slaves and their descendants. She follows a black child from the imposed illiteracy and countless other disadvantages of his life in slavery, through tutoring by good priests and sisters, to his formation and schooling unto priesthood at the heart of Catholicism in Rome. The book uses the utmost reserve to describe the whole cruel lot of what African Americans had to suffer as a result of the system of chattel slavery and the concomitant racism, which still dogs us even in the Catholic Church. Thanks to Sr. Caroline’s book, we can marvel at human accomplishment against all odds in the life of this man, who could realize his dream and become a priest of God.

    While not a bedtime story for small children, the book could be excellent family reading, especially with junior and senior high students. I personally gained a lot from the reading. What Scripture refers to as the whole cruel lot of slaves comes to life in Sister’s description of the Tolton family. Totally realistic but not graphic, the book simply edifies.

    Go for it! Take and read!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI 

     

A Book Recommendation in Honor of my 70th Birthday!

For my 70th birthday the other day (old man!), my sister sent me a picture of Mom and Dad "unwrapping" me upon returning home from my baptism that many years ago.

It was all the encouragement I needed to recommend a book I had read recently, the title of which some people might find alarming:

Lofton, Michael. 

Is My Baby in Hell?: Hope for Parents of Unbaptized Infants. 

R&T Press. Kindle Edition. 

    Lofton starts from his personal anguish over failing to prevent the abortion of his child, conceived out of wedlock. The book is very well written and not in the least overstated.

    I recommend it to you especially for the solid methodology he used to analyze one of those puzzling chapters in the elaboration of Church teaching on the urgency of bringing, first and foremost, our loved ones to the saving waters of Baptism, but moreover being eager that no one should be deprived of the grace of this great and first Sacrament which sets us free from sin and claims us for Christ. In Baptism (after the fall of Adam and Eve) the door is opened once again to fulfill God's Will in creating us. As the old catechism states in question and answer form: Why did God make me? God in His love, made me to know, love and serve Him in this life, so as to be happy with Him forever in Heaven.

    Infant Baptism is the keystone to the edifice of our struggle against the culture of death, which holds so much of society today hostage.

One more picture!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Where the Truth lies

 

    This lovely and straightforward recording of the Introit for the great feast of Mary's Assumption body and soul into heaven got me  to thinking about our lives here in what we really should describe as a "vale of tears". When it comes to living life fully, when it comes to finding happiness in life: Where does the truth lie? Which way to the light?

Introit (Apoc. 12:1)

    A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.

(Ps 97:1) Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done wondrous deeds.

V. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. R. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

    A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.

    In every age, place and time the wise, the seekers and countless from among God's little ones have been drawn to the radiance of that "great sign which appeared in heaven". Whether our artistic portrayal is that of Our Lady of Guadalupe or of a beautiful Immaculate Conception, there she is: clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and crowned with twelve stars! Could there be an image at once more sublime and more reassuring?

    By saying that, I am posing a challenge to all those people who can't imagine striving for glory. I am calling out those people in and outside the Church, who don't see the sufficiency of that image of Mary the Mother of God raised up body and soul to her place beside her Son at the Father's right hand.

    The Feast of the Assumption should help us cast the Church in its proper framework in terms of our destiny. We are called to greater than this world and its best but always passing structures could possibly offer to us.

    Pray with me for all those who would settle for anything less than the consolation which is ours in the great sign given to us for our hope! Pray for an end to the shortsightedness which casts our trajectory in life in terms of career based "accomplishments" or some sort of institutional model of promotion!

    "Almighty, everlasting God, Who took up, body and soul, the immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of Your Son, into heavenly glory, grant, we beseech You, that, always devoting ourselves to heavenly things, we may be found worthy to share in her glory."

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

We cannot live without Sunday - St. Justin Martyr

    This old man (yours truly) was both proud and pleased to see Bishop Donald DeGrood of Sioux Falls in the forefront of Diocesan Ordinaries calling their people back to Sunday obligation (here). From the looks of some of the Facebook comments, by calling the healthy folk back to church he has risked critique and controversy. It could not be otherwise. Bravo!

    In some ways, I suppose, St. Justin Martyr had it easier. Threatening him and his loved ones with execution, his judge was intent on pressing him to deny the living God and pay service to the empire's false gods. Nothing seems to be that straightforward today, but in a sense Catholics today are confronted by the same issue. We are called to do what Catholics of every age, nation and generation have been called to do on Sunday: get out of the sack, clean yourself up, and move across the threshold into the Temple of the living God, whether it be a grandiose basilica or some quaint little wood frame building at the intersection of two county roads, paved or gravel.

    It is that getting up and moving, not soapbox rhetoric, which has always been our confession, our glory. As for St. Justin Martyr, so also for us it is simply a matter of necessity, a matter of life and death. No human tribunal can dispense me from the Lord's reasonable commands.

    Not wishing to play down the risks involved in COVID both for ourselves and for others, we still recognize that Sunday is not dispensable. Our lives need Sunday, the first day of the week which belongs to God and therefore to all of us just that much more. 

    Where bishops and priests are hesitant, I pray that individuals and heads of households will courageously move themselves and their loved ones. More than ever today we need confessors of the faith. Martyrdom for the sake of Christ is not sought out in our tradition, but then it is not shunned when such a stance is unavoidable for the sake of His Holy Name and for our everlasting life.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

The Need for Anchorage in Troubled Times

 

Reclaiming our Roman Catholic Birthright

The Genius & Timeliness of the Traditional Latin Mass

by Peter Kwasniewski

Angelico Press, 2020

    My copy of Dr. Kwasniewski's book reached me by mail the other day. From Lincoln, Nebraska to Bern, Switzerland it took over two months (memories of my seminary days in Rome in the 1970's!). That is part of the COVID story as well. All of a sudden the forward march of history/progress no longer seems quite so ineluctable. 

    With the book in my hands finally, the first thing I did was to look at what I had written back then for the cover of the book. I asked myself just what I would change if I were writing my recommendation for the book now these so many months, almost a half year, later. Let me draw out these couple sentences for comment!

    "Overwhelming numbers of practicing Catholics cannot seem to move past the worldly solutions of the last half-century. Dare I say that they cling to the Novus Ordo in desperation, rather than embracing a full project of being the Church, with catechesis and family life, finding in the Vetus Ordo the source and summit of Christian existence? ... May the virtue of hope inspire them to make the leap and the sacrifices involved in what amounts to a true paradigm change!"

    This talk of a "paradigm change" has real urgency for me, as I feel there is nothing too salvific about trying to reassure people with appeals to pursuing a hermeneutic of continuity, whatever that is supposed to entail. In calling for a paradigm change, I am very consciously declaring that the object of the exercise goes far beyond a ritual rerooting. The sad reality of Catholic life/lite in no few places around the globe over this last past half century is the result of a reductio ad absurdum. A once multifaceted Catholic life has been dismissed as unsustainable and the cornerstone of that life, the Holy Sacrifice - Divine Worship, has been reduced to a discursive exercise with nary a hint of the sublime.

    While the situation has been grave and in earnest need of attention, I think I wrote the sentences above, not only not knowing about the consequences of a 21st Century pandemic, but also very much abstracted from the possibility that Corona and COVID lock-down would be more than a bump in the road. Perhaps naively enough back in March or early April, I believed that after a time of deprivation, old rhythms of church practice would pick up where they left off last February. How wrong could I have been! I ask myself whether the measures so tenaciously imposed by civic authorities do not amount to a coup de grâce for the Novus Ordo. 

    My lawyer, a young, regular practicing Swiss Catholic, put it this way: The lock-down deprived us of a sacramental life for longer than we could hold out... I had not thought of it that way. Namely, not only did being cooped up in tiny apartments yield its share of domestic violence, pathological depression, intensified alcohol and drug abuse, suicide attempts and broken families, but the hiatus in Sunday parish life and Mass practice took lots of lay people, who had been faithful, beyond the point of no return. Thanks to the lock-down and the hard-nosed attitude toward church of many civil authorities, Sunday Mass attendance has become discretionary.

    A cousin of mine in the States wrote me telling of an old school mate who had tried to go back to church, but panicked after a couple weeks for the percentage of people in the pews who were not wearing masks and announced he was settling from now on for Sunday TV Mass. I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that the Novus Ordo has been totally relativized by the lock-down and the demands of social distancing; for most ordinary folks the Mass of Paul VI has lost whatever staying power it might have had. The pre-Mass ritual of taking down your contact details and sanitizing your hands in the vestibule has not helped matters either.

    Some people would blame this disaffection, at least in part, on all the live-streaming of Masses on the internet, which took something once done for the edification of elderly shut-ins and as a supplement to Sunday (daily Mass on EWTN) and made it the Sunday experience and in some countries the sole access to church. From family and friends I know of the kind of exchanges which went on among pious folk, recommending to each other their favorite TV or internet Mass experience, whether Word on Fire or somebody's cathedral half way across the continent.

    As far as the Vetus Ordo goes, the TV and live-streaming experience has been rather positive. A young Dominican priest told me the other day, that the size of their tiny traditional Sunday Mass has doubled since their return to public Masses. He attributes it in part to the video offerings of the traditional Mass, which acquainted especially young families with the Mass of all ages. Because of the two-meter-distancing rule, they are presently offering two Sunday Masses. He is hopeful that when restrictions are finally lifted, they will still have a house full in their tiny church. Moreover, news of these increased and constant numbers at Mass has reached the diocesan curia and they are eager to guarantee a sufficient number of priests for this chapel and to guarantee another Vetus Ordo Mass every Sunday in the other major population center of the diocese. Deo gratias!

    I have read any number of glowing reviews of Dr. Kwasniewski's book and I find them all very much to the point. My own hope would be that people will take up his book and read all or part, as their personal interest dictates. We need to read, study and reflect. Because the object of this exercise is not just to encourage choosing a different address for Sunday Mass, but of owning for yourself a new (yes, new) way of articulating your Catholicism, getting your hands on a book or ebook and moving beyond sympathies is a sine qua non. 

    Peter's Conclusion, For a Darkening Church, the Light Is Tradition, might be a good place to start for those of you still new to the business of reading real books (especially of 300+ pages). Some might brand Dr. Kwasniewski as strident or hard-hitting. Don't let those moments put you off but recognize just how upbeat he is in what he has to offer as the "pearl of great price"!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI