I Didn’t Vote on Tuesday

I didn’t vote this past Tuesday, and I explain why in my latest column from the Center for Michigan’s Bridge magazine: “Why Did This Conservative Stay Home on Election Day?” It has been a decade since I last took part in the electoral process, and my main motivation for voting then was to support amending the Michigan constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. (Incidentally, that amendment was upheld yesterday by the Sixth Circuit of Appeals — though Heaven only knows for how long.) It’s not out of the question I will head to the polls again at some point in the future. For now, however, I’m staying home. From the article:

My quarrel is not over which marginally different candidate won and what marginally different causes he or she will claim to advance, but rather with a political landscape that furnishes us with such lackluster, nay, deplorable options. I will gladly set aside my right to gripe about this or that lawmaker so long as I do not have to endorse a system that makes their political careers possible. So long as that system endures, my refusal to vote shall as well.

Lancelot Andrewes Press

Lancelot Andrews Press (LAP) may be the most interesting Christian publishing ventures around. It is an Orthodox press which reprints Catholic books translated by and for Anglicans. Alright, maybe their situation is a bit more “nuanced” than that. After all, they did publish a very detailed (and lovely) edition of The Book of Common Prayer calibrated for use by Western Rite Orthodox (WRO). (However, I see no reason why a Catholic could not use it for private devotion after making a few reasonable modifications to certain texts.) Then there is also the St. Ambrose Prayer Book which, with the exception of the mutilated form of “The Mass of St. Gregory” the WRO enjoy, would be usable by any traditional Catholic.

While I have never been a big user of their books (though I own a few and have borrowed some others), I find little reason why a Catholic, understandably ill-disposed toward the Liturgy of the Hours and unprepared to recite either the Breviarium Monasticum (BM) or Breviarium Romanum in Latin, couldn’t pick up LAP’s Monastic Diurnal — a mostly faithful translation of the BM — and begin to recite the traditional daily office. Sure, it may be necessary to find the propers for a couple of feasts that are not properly represented in their full doctrinal maturity (e.g., December 8 for the Immaculate Conception), but that’s a minor matter in the grand scheme of things. Once familiarity with the diurnal is accomplished, then there is always their much more challenging, but exceedingly rich, Monastic Matins edition to add to one’s daily rule of prayer. Some might point out the St. Michael’s Abbey Latin/English edition of the Diurnale Monasticum as a superior option for Catholics. To some extent they would be right, though one advantage of the LAP edition is that it presents the full monastic office as it stood prior to the needless abbreviations inflicted upon it in the 1960s.