December 17, 2014 Church

Ember Wednesday

I had set out to put something concentrated together for the three Ember Days of Advent, but two pending writing commitments won’t allow that, at least not this year. If you have never heard of the Ember Days, or are only vaguely aware of them because you accidentally opened to their propers when you were flipping to find the right Sunday in your hand missal just prior to the solitary Tridentine Mass the diocese so “graciously” and “pastorally” provides its neo-Pelagians, there is, or used to be, something about fasting and prayer associated with them; no more, of course. No more of that “stuff,” that “rigidity” which proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you possess a disturbing lack of faith, failing, as you perpetually do, to allow a Construct-of-Surprises to knock at your heart.

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December 16, 2014 Movies

Knight of Cups

I enjoy, even at times love, Terrence Malick’s films. There. I said it, and I won’t apologize for it either. Knight of Cups, his seventh, is due in theaters early next year — a shocker given that To The Wonder came out less than three years ago. Under the usual Malick time horizon, one would expect a decade — maybe two — to go by first, but since 2011’s Tree of Life, he seems intent on getting his projects wrapped up sooner rather than later.

Although I am not deaf to thoughtful criticism of Malick’s work, I believe David Bentley Hart did a fine job lampooning a great deal of anti-Malick sentiment with his “Seven Characters in Search of a Nihil Obstat.” It seems that too many want to approach Malick as a “religious filmmaker” which, in their minds, means he has to be a “Christian filmmaker” with a clear confessional bent. People are understandably uncomfortable with what I would call the “natural theology” of The Thin Red Line; there are Gnostic undertones to the cryptic spirituality which emerges from attempting to comprehend the darkness which relentlessly attempts to engulf the light.

Knight of Cups, based on the trailer, looks surprisingly straightforward film: a life of excess called into question by rediscovering love. If the theme is truly that simple, would it be so bad?

December 14, 2014 Church, Liturgy

Gaudete

Today is Gaudete Sunday in the Roman Church. The name is taken from the first word of the Introit at Mass, which in English reads: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Let your forbearance be known to all, for the Lord is near at hand; have no anxiety about anything, but in all things, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. Lord, you have blessed your land; you have turned away the captivity of Jacob.” A large portion of the text is taken from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, which is also the Epistle reading for this day.

Unlike the other Sundays and ferias of Advent, the somber and penitential tones are set aside for one of joyous expectation at the coming of the Lord. A parallel moment of interrupting joy can be found in the Byzantine Rite’s use of the same epistle on Palm Sunday, which looks just past the mournfulness of Holy Week to the Resurrection which triumphs over all.

It is in the Incarnation and Resurrection — not clever sermons, whimsical statements of intramundane comfort, and emotive spiritualism — that Catholics are to find true joy. We are not bound together by our participation in the ecclesial version of the United Nations and the rhetoric of social justice, but by our common faith that the Word of God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, became a little child, suffered, died, and rose again for the life of the world.

December 9, 2014 Politics

Thoughts on the UVA Fallout

My Google News feed is never short of unsettling stories, ranging from global headline grabbers to more localized luridness, such the trial of a 30-something Catholic high school tutor who had sex with an underage student. As for national stories, there’s the ongoing strife over Michael Brown and Eric Garner’s deaths; anxiousness over a pending Senate report on the CIA and torture; and the fallout over the recent revelation that Rolling Stone’s (RS) article on a brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia (UVA) fell more than a wee bit short of journalistic standards. That revelation in particular has received a polarized response, with those on the Right showing a characteristic lack of tact when it comes to blasting RS and, by extension, the young woman at UVA, Jackie, who may or may not have authorized the publication to go with her story—a story which, whether one sympathizes with her or not, appears to be riddled with factual inaccuracies and implausible statements. The Left, naturally, is in a tizzy, for in their eyes, those who would attack RS and criticize Julie are now “rape apologists” who want nothing more than to keep the booze-filled, empty headed, and ogreish fraternity culture alive and well on campuses across the country. (As an aside, I should note, from personal observation, that the drinking-and-sex atmosphere of college fraternity life is ubiquitous; I can think of a half-dozen examples of sexual predation and rape being conducted by men who would likely be defined as “hipsters” and posture to everyone that they were “feminists,” “Leftists,” “counter-cultural,” etc. I saw similar behavior in punk/hardcore circles in my teens as well.)

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December 8, 2014 Church

Happy Anniversary Syllabus Errorum

Earlier this year I took Fr. John Hunwicke’s lead by reminding you, dear readers, that here, in 2014, we should take time to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Blessed Pope Pius XI’s Quanta Cura and the Syllabus Errorum. You can find some of my thoughts on the matter in an earlier post, “The Fortnight and the Syllabus.” Rorate Caeli is also getting in on remembering this important moment in the life of the universal Church. Shouldn’t you, too?

Some say that today’s primary festivity, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, is the most misunderstood feast in the Catholic Church. Perhaps. I would like to think Quanta and the Syllabus are among her most misunderstood documents, for there are far too many who fail to comprehend their relevance to us today.

December 8, 2014 Eastern Orthodox Church

Something Uncomfortable Worth Reading

The Monomakhos web-log is exceedingly silly, even by Orthodox blogging standards, but a recent comment by one Ashley Nevins is worth mulling over. I have some reservations about several of Nevins’s remarks, and I am certainly no fan of his ecclesial orientation. However, Nevins’s comments on the role of shaming in contemporary American Orthodox “spiritual circles” is not entirely off the mark. To give you some background, his son, Scott Nevins, was a monk at the Ephraimite monastery, St. Anthony’s, in Arizona. He committed suicide.