Marriage Vows

I know it is common for couples today to compose their own wedding vows. When my wife and I married 63 years ago, we never thought of writing our own vows. In our innocence we accepted the traditional words. In turn we said:

I take you for my lawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.

I take you for my lawful husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.

That was all we said. I then placed a ring on my bride’s finger “as a sign of our marriage vows.” Although it was followed by a Mass, the actual wedding was a brief ceremony taking no more than five minutes. I still have the little wedding pamphlet from that day, and I notice that the priest did not even say, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” It was our brief vows that made us man and wife.

The pamphlet included an introduction that provided the basis for the simple vows. Reading it today I can honestly say that I was not aware at the time of the awesome significance of the words.  I realize now that the words represented an ideal that would not be easy to attain. 

This union then is most serious, because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate, that it will profoundly influence your whole future. That future, with its hopes and disappointments, its successes, and its failures, its pleasures and its pains, its joys and its sorrows, is hidden from your eyes. You know that these elements are mingled in every life, and are to be expected in your own. And so, not knowing what is before you, you take each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death.

Truly, then, these words are most serious. It is a beautiful tribute to your undoubted faith in each other, that, recognizing their full import, you are nevertheless so willing and ready to pronounce them. And because these words involve such solemn obligations, it is most fitting that you rest the security of your wedded life upon the great principle of self-sacrifice. And so you begin your married life by the voluntary and complete surrender of your individual lives in the interest of that deeper and wider life which you are to have in common. Henceforth you belong entirely to each other; you will be one in mind, one in heart, and one in affections. And whatever sacrifices you may be required to make to preserve this common life, always make them generously. Sacrifice is usually difficult and irksome. Only love can make it easy; and perfect love can make it a joy. We are willing to give in proportion as we love.

No greater blessing can come to your married life than pure conjugal love, loyal and true to the end. May, then, this love with which you join your hands and hearts today, never fail, but grow deeper and stronger as the years go on.

I doubt that I read those words back then, or even that I would have understood their full significance if I had read them. It would take a lifetime. 

Maybe the best depiction of the exchange of vows can be found in the final scene of the award winning 1946 film, The Best Years of Our Lives. It ends with the simple wedding ceremony of a sailor who after losing both his hands in the war, returned home to find that his childhood sweetheart was still in love with him. Click on this link for the brief video. 

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Anti--Catholicism

  HistoriaFamed 

Famous American historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.  once claimed that anti-Catholicism is "the deepest held bias in American history." It began in the days of the Puritan colonial founders, continued through the era of massive Catholic immigration of over a hundred years ago, and persists today in Protestant evangelicals, Progressive atheists, and even lapsed Catholics.

One of its signs is the animus, sometimes comical but often venomous, directed against Catholic nuns. Just last week an editorial in the Wall Street Journal decried the efforts of New York State officials to force the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne to comply with State LGBTQ rules. This religious order, whose founder was Rose Hawthorne, the daughter of the famed American novelist, is noted for its work in caring for the dying in its hospice at Rosary Hill in New York. It is an exemplary institution not only because the sisters accept no payment but also because they do the work themselves even to the point of scrubbing the floors on their hands and knees.

I personally know people whose parents spent their last days there in peace and dignity. They have nothing but praise for these self sacrificing nuns and their work. Unfortunately, the idea of self sacrifice seems to have gone our of favor today. 

The incident at Rosary Hill brought to mind my review of the film adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel, The Painted Veil, that also dealt with the idea or ideal of self sacrifice. See below. 

The Painted Veil is a 2006 American film adaptation of a novel written in 1925 by W. Somerset Maugham, one of the most popular novelists of the first half of the twentieth century. Although an atheist, Maugham’s novel expressed his deep interest in religion. The book’s protagonist is Kitty, a young English socialite who enters into a marriage of convenience with a man she doesn't love. Things get worse when her husband's work takes her from England to the British colony of Hong Kong where she has an affair with a married British official. Upon discovery, the husband insists she accompany him to an inland Chinese city where he intends to study and deal with a raging cholera epidemic. She suspects that he is taking her there in hopes that she will catch the dreaded disease.

 

I will not divulge much more of the story but just introduce what I consider to be a very significant detail. In the stricken city, Kitty is left largely alone while her husband does his medical research among the sick and dying. To pass the time she visits a Catholic orphanage run by a handful of French nuns who care for children abandoned by their parents. Irreligious herself, she is impressed by the nuns and their work.

 

Maugham’s novel is all about the transformation of the selfish heroine during the cholera epidemic by her encounter with true self-sacrifice: first on the part of the small group of French nuns who have left their homes forever to care for the needy in China, and second, on the part of her unloved husband who ultimately succumbs to cholera himself in trying to help fight the disease. 

 

The modern film version, starring Naomi Watts and Edward Norton, tries to remain faithful to the novel. You can’t blame them for turning it into a love story and altering Maugham’s convoluted ending. Such changes, I believe, alter the letter but not the spirit of the original. Nevertheless, in one respect the filmmakers do violate the spirit of the novel with a gratuitous injection of modern sensibilities. 

 

At one point in the film, Kitty tells her husband how impressed she is with the nuns. Her husband, who in the book has real respect for the nuns and their work, snidely replies that they are merely buying children from their impoverished parents in order to make them little Catholics. This insert of modern cant and prejudice is entirely gratuitous. 

 

The filmmakers go even further. The Mother Superior, played by Diana Rigg, is portrayed as having a kind of crisis of faith. Her initial ardor, that made her give up home and family, has waned and she admits to a kind of spiritual burn out. Again, this is an injection of modern prejudice that totally violates the spirit of Maugham’s novel.

 

Here is an excerpt from the novel that expresses both Kitty’s and Maugham’s real feelings.

 

“Your first thought when looking at the Mother Superior was that as a girl she must have been beautiful, but in a moment you realized that this was a woman whose beauty, depending on character, had grown with advancing years. … But the most striking thing about her was the air she had of authority tempered by Christian charity: you felt in her the habit of command. To be obeyed was natural to her, but she accepted obedience with humility. You could not fail to see that she was deeply conscious of the authority of the church which upheld her. But Kitty had a surmise that notwithstanding her austere demeanor she had for human frailty a human tolerance; and it was impossible to look at her grave smile when she listened to Waddington, unabashed, talking nonsense, without being sure that she  had a lively sense of the ridiculous.”

Later, Kitty relates her feelings to Waddington, a skeptical and agnostic British official who has been stationed in China for many years.

“I can’t tell you how deeply moved I’ve been by all I’ve seen at the convent. They’re wonderful, those nuns, they make me feel utterly worthless. They gave up everything, their home, their country, love, children, freedom; and all the little things which I sometimes think must be harder still to give up, flowers and green fields, going for a walk on an autumn day, books and music, comfort, everything they give up, everything. And they do it so that they may devote themselves to a life of sacrifice, poverty, obedience, killing work, and prayer. To all of them this world is really and truly a place of exile. Life is a cross which they willingly bear, but in their hearts all the time is the desire—oh, it’s so much stronger than desire, it’s a longing, an eager and passionate longing for the death which shall lead them to life everlasting. …

Supposing there is no life everlasting? Think what it means if death is really the end of all things. They’ve given up all for nothing. They’ve been cheated. They’re dupes.”

Waddington reflected for a little while.

“I wonder. I wonder if it matters that what they have aimed at is an illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.”

Kitty sighed. What he said seemed hard. She wanted more.

“Have you ever been to a symphony concert?” he continued,

Every member of the orchestra plays his own little instrument, and what do you think he knows of the complicated harmonies which enroll themselves on the indifferent air? He is concerned only with his own small share. But he knows that the symphony is lovely, and though there’s none to hear it, it is lovely still, and he is content to play his part.”

Toward the end, as the widowed and pregnant Kitty plans to return to England, the Mother Superior bids her adieu. 

 “Good-bye, God bless you, my dear child.” She held her for a moment in her arms. “Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding.” 

Despite my caveats, The Painted Veil is a serious film with a compelling story. the acting and cinematography are excellent. A 1934 adaptation is also worth watching especially since it stars Greta Garbo in one of her magnificent performances. Interestingly, this version, coming so soon after the publication of the novel, gives little notice to the nuns and the orphanage.

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Today's Quote: When people cease to believe in God, they will believe in anything. G.K. Chesterton.

The Problem of Pain

  

Camille Paglia

This post about an interview with author Camille Paglia that appeared in the Wall Street Journal back in 2019 was reprised here in 2023 after a personal family tragedy.  I still think it is relevant today. 

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The Wall Street Journal weekend edition regularly features interviews with  prominent personalities on its op-ed pages. Last weekend the interview was with Camille Paglia, the well-known feminist author, lecturer, and professor. At the age of 72 Paglia has come under fire from students at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia who are demanding that she be fired. Despite her feminist credentials, some of Paglia’s positions, like her praise of Capitalism, are no longer in favor. *

I do not wish to get involved in feminist debates but would just like to discuss a seemingly unrelated incident in Paglia’s life that she remembered quite vividly. In fact, she regarded it as a turning point. At the age of fifteen she was in religious education class when she had the nerve to ask the teacher, an Irish Catholic nun, a very challenging and provocative question. In those days we would have called it a smart-ass question. Naturally, the nun reacted and condemned Paglia roundly in front of the class for even asking such a question. That was it for Paglia. From that day on she would have nothing to do with Catholicism. 

Coincidentally, over the weekend a friend told me of an acquaintance who left the Church because of another seemingly trivial incident. The woman had invited a soloist to sing at her wedding but after the Mass was over, the priest chided her for taking business away from the church’s own soloist. Boom! That was it. She has never gone to church again. Reactions like these are not unusual. In my lifetime I have heard of many such incidents or personal confrontations that led people to stop attending church. It is usually not a question of belief or doctrine, nor does it mean that they become bad people.  

There are more serious reasons for losing one’s faith in God or ceasing to practice the faith of your fathers. Perhaps the greatest is the problem of pain and suffering. In an email exchange, also over this weekend, an old friend told me that he had trouble believing in God and that he no longer attended church. He wrote, “If God is so good, how do you explain little children suffering from cancer?” He also asked me to explain all the pain and suffering that will result from natural disasters like hurricane Dorian.

The problem of pain and suffering, some call it the problem of evil, has been around since the dawn of recorded history. My wife and I sat down over the weekend to watch a National Geographic documentary on great animal migrations. After ten minutes we had to shut it off. The carnage and killing were horrific.  The crocodiles, leopards, and other predators did not seem concerned with the problem of pain. Human beings are obviously just as capable of inflicting pain and suffering but I believe that we are the only animals who think or worry about it.

Philosophers, theologians, and scientists have grappled with it and no one has yet come up with a completely satisfactory answer. Certainly, I haven’t. In ancient times personal suffering and natural disasters were attributed to the gods. The gods were either punishing people for their misdeeds, or were merely malevolent, playing with humans like a cat with a mouse.

In thinking about my friend’s question, I wondered if the answer could be found by considering the example of Jesus, the founder of Christianity.  No matter what you think of Jesus, his approach to the problem of pain and suffering was revolutionary. Even a cursory reading of the gospels indicates that Jesus was a healer. When confronted with pain and suffering, he healed the pain and did not blame God or anyone else. 

He gave sight to a man who had been blind from birth. Ordinary people claimed that the blindness was the result of the sins of the man’s parents. Jesus would have none of it, and just restored his sight. When a man suffering from paralysis was brought before him, rather than blaming him for his sins, he forgave them and then cured his illness.

When he heard that people had been killed when a tower collapsed in a nearby city, he told his hearers that the people who died were no more sinful than anyone else. I’m sure he would have said the same about the victims of hurricanes and earthquakes. His response to the problem of pain and suffering was to heal and minister to the suffering. He instructed his followers to do the same.

In the teaching of Jesus, God is not the cause of suffering but the cure. Those who believe in Nature believe in a cruel god who never forgives. We speak of Mother Nature but she is not the kind of mother any of us would like to have. Scientists may tell us that many must be sacrificed to cleanse the herd in the interests of survival and progress but something inside of us tells us to deplore pain and suffering and do our best to prevent and heal. That something inside of us is as much a sign of the existence of a loving God as anything else the philosophers and theologians have ever thought of. 

Camille Paglia’s wise-ass question to the poor nun, who was giving her life to educate children like her, was: “If God is infinitely forgiving, is it possible that at some point in the future He will forgive Satan?” It is true that the nun should not have blown up, especially since she only had to turn to her catechism for the simple answer. In the catechism Catholics are told that God must forgive those who repent and ask for forgiveness, and so He certainly would forgive if Satan repents and asks for forgiveness. Unfortunately, Satan, like many wise fifteen-year-olds, will have none of it.

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* Note: Students failed to convince the University of the Arts to fire Professor Paglia back in 2019, but the school closed its doors in 2024. She now functions as an independent scholar.

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Quote of the Day: "I would not want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member." Groucho Marx

Easter Hope

 

Easter Bombing in Pakistan

Today, I reproduce a post written ten years ago about attacks on Christians at Easter time. Ten years later I still find it difficult to understand why so many hate Christians and Easter.

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 Reputed members of the Islamic State murdered four nuns of the Missionaries of Charity working in an elder care facility in Aden, Yemen on March 4, 2016. The only crime of these nuns, like some many thousands of others brutally persecuted in recent years, was that they were Christians. What is so bad about Christianity? 

Personally, I like practically everything about it, especially the belief in, and hope in the resurrection from the dead. 

It is clear from Scripture that, even after the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday, his subsequent Ascension forty days later, and the incredible events of Pentecost, St. Peter did not fully understand the implications of the Resurrection. Only after a personal vision convinced him that Jesus died and rose for all, did Peter see the light. He said,

“Now I really understand that God is not a respecter of persons, but in every nation he who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. He sent his word to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ (who is Lord of all). You know what took place throughout Judea: for he began in Galilee after the baptism preached by John: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and he went about doing good and healing all who were in the power of the devil; for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all that he did in the country of the Jews and Jerusalem; and yet they killed him, hanging him on a tree. But God raised him on the third day and caused him to be plainly seen, not by all the people, but by witnesses designated beforehand by God, that is, by us, who ate and drank with him after he had risen from the dead. And he charged us to preach to the people and to testify that he it is who has been appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness, that through his name all who believe in him may receive forgiveness of sins.” *

I have come to believe with Peter that “God is not a respecter of persons, but in every nation he who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Nevertheless, I like being a Christian, especially a Catholic.  As I said, I like a religion that believes in and holds out hope for resurrection, for a life after death. 

I like to think that the four nuns murdered in Yemen by Moslem fanatics earlier this month are living a new life, and that they are not just rotting bodies being picked apart by vultures. It also strikes me that those four nuns, like tens of thousands of other Christians who have also been brutally persecuted in our own time, had already given up their lives in the service of others when they took their initial vows. Like Jesus, they went about doing good and healing.

Even today, the day after Easter, there is the terrible news that Taliban suicide bombers murdered at least 65 people and wounded over 300 in Pakistan just because they were Christians celebrating Easter.

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*Acts of the Apostles 10: 25-37.

Mark Twain: First Impressions and Second Thoughts

My wife and I recently read and enjoyed Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad, a wonderful read full of Twain's characteristic humor and great story telling. It is an account of a trip he took in 1867 on a steamboat full of what he called pious Protestant American pilgrims anxious to explore the Old World, especially the Holy Land. I recommend the book highly to anyone interested in American history, but do not intend to write a review here. I just want to reproduce an episode that I found illustrated a universal truth. 

While in the Holy Land a few of the pilgrims took a side trip to the desolate Dead Sea. It turned out to be a hot and exhausting journey even on horseback. Afterwards, the weary travelers found an overnight refuge in a lonely monastery. Below is Twain's account of that episode in which his first impressions of the monks were altered by actual experience, a lesson for us all. It starts with a devastating critique but ends with appreciation.

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Some of those men have been shut up there for thirty years. In all that dreary time they have not heard the laughter of a child or the blessed voice of a woman; they have seen no human tears, no human smiles; they have known no human joys, no wholesome human sorrows. In their hearts are no memories of the past, in their brains no dreams of the future. All that is lovable, beautiful, worthy, they have put far away from them; against all things that are pleasant to look upon, and all sounds that are music to the ear, they have barred their massive doors and reared their relentless walls of stone forever. They have banished the tender grace of life and left only the sapped and skinny mockery. Their lips are lips that never kiss and never sing; their hearts are hearts that never hate and never love; their breasts are breasts that never swell with the sentiment, “I have a country and a flag.” They are dead men who walk.

I set down these first thoughts because they are natural—not because they are just or because it is right to set them down. It is easy for book-makers to say “I thought so and so as I looked upon such and such a scene”—when the truth is, they thought all those fine things afterwards. One’s first thought is not likely to be strictly accurate, yet it is no crime to think it and none to write it down, subject to modification by later experience. These hermits are dead men, in several respects, but not in all; and it is not proper, that, thinking ill of them at first, I should go on doing so, or, speaking ill of them I should reiterate the words and stick to them. No, they treated us too kindly for that. There is something human about them somewhere. They knew we were foreigners and Protestants, and not likely to feel admiration or much friendliness toward them. But their large charity was above considering such things. They simply saw in us men who were hungry, and thirsty, and tired, and that was sufficient. They opened their doors and gave us welcome. They asked no questions, and they made no self-righteous display of their hospitality. They fished for no compliments. They moved quietly about, setting the table for us, making the beds, and bringing water to wash in, and paid no heed when we said it was wrong for them to do that when we had men whose business it was to perform such offices. We fared most comfortably, and sat late at dinner. We walked all over the building with the hermits afterward, and then sat on the lofty battlements and smoked while we enjoyed the cool air, the wild scenery and the sunset. One or two chose cosy bed-rooms to sleep in, but the nomadic instinct prompted the rest to sleep on the broad divan that extended around the great hall, because it seemed like sleeping out of doors, and so was more cheery and inviting. It was a royal rest we had.

When we got up to breakfast in the morning, we were new men. For all this hospitality no strict charge was made. We could give something if we chose; we need give nothing, if we were poor or if we were stingy. The pauper and the miser are as free as any in the Catholic Convents of Palestine. I have been educated to enmity toward every thing that is Catholic, and sometimes, in consequence of this, I find it much easier to discover Catholic faults than Catholic merits. But there is one thing I feel no disposition to overlook, and no disposition to forget: and that is, the honest gratitude I and all pilgrims owe, to the Convent Fathers in Palestine. Their doors are always open, and there is always a welcome for any worthy man who comes, whether he comes in rags or clad in purple. The Catholic Convents are a priceless blessing to the poor. A pilgrim without money, whether he be a Protestant or a Catholic, can travel the length and breadth of Palestine, and in the midst of her desert wastes find wholesome food and a clean bed every night, in these buildings. Pilgrims in better circumstances are often stricken down by the sun and the fevers of the country, and then their saving refuge is the Convent. Without these hospitable retreats, travel in Palestine would be a pleasure which none but the strongest men could dare to undertake. Our party, pilgrims and all, will always be ready and always willing, to touch glasses and drink health, prosperity and long life to the Convent Fathers of Palestine.

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Easter Signs 2025

   

I was born and raised a Catholic and have remained so for 85 years. Frankly, I have to say that I still like being a Catholic. One of the many reasons is the great feast of Easter. At Mass the other day, we heard the story of a woman who was about to be stoned to death for adultery by an angry crowd of accusers who had apparently caught her in the act. They brought her to Jesus to get his opinion before proceeding. His reply still resounds through the ages. "Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone." 

Hearing those words, the crowd melted away, and the woman was left alone with Jesus. He said that since no one would condemn her, neither would he. But he just told her to sin no more. He had in effect raised her from the brink of death and then showed her the way to live thereafter. Her resurrection is a sign of his own resurrection that we celebrate on Easter. 

There are many other signs that remind us of Easter. Some have become secularized and commercialized but I still like them. The Easter egg is a symbol that refers to the tomb from which Jesus arose on Easter Sunday. The Easter bunny itself is a sign of the risen Christ seen by believers in the Eucharistic host. The great Renaissance artist Titian featured it in a painting that is usually called the Madonna of the Rabbit.

More often the risen Christ is depicted as the Lamb of God from the Book of Revelation. More than 500 years ago, Jan van Eyck painted the most famous version of the Mystical Lamb in the Ghent altarpiece. In my own parish church of Our Lady of the Assumption in Fairfield, Connecticut, the Lamb is shown in the center of a beautiful Rose window at the back of the Church. The Lamb reclines on the Book of the Seven Seals with a triumphal cross and banner.

 The word "Easter" comes from a Germanic goddess of spring. Latin peoples use the word pasqua from the Jewish pasch or passover. When the Germanic peoples were converted the Church wisely associated the word for Springtime with the feast of the Risen Lord. All around us new life is springing from the dead of winter. 

One of the many traditions associated with Easter was the famous Easter Parade, especially on New York's 5th Avenue. Here is a link to the ending of the film Easter Parade that featured Fred Astaire and Judy Garland. He was a little old but she was never lovelier than when she sang the title song. The film is one of the most joyful I have ever seen, and so, despite the absence of any overtly religious imagery, is all about Easter. 

Happy Easter.

Ash Wednesday

 

                                             

A few years ago around Ash Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by Michael S. Roth, the President of Wesleyan University, on the reluctance of modern students to consider topics like the soul and salvation. In addition to his administrative duties Roth taught a class in which he tried to inculcate historical imagination in his students by asking them to consider and discuss the questions that deeply concerned people in the past. However, he was disconcerted when he discovered a particular blind spot among his students.

Whenever he tried to discuss the interest of philosophers and other thinkers in the past with questions about the soul and salvation, he found a decided reticence on the part of his students to engage. Although usually eager to discuss any of the pressing issues of the day, the students generally clammed up and avoided eye contact by looking down into their notebooks. 

Unfortunately, Roth did not go into the reasons for the students’ reserve but took most of his essay explaining why it was important to understand why such issues had such importance to great thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. Roth admitted that he was a secular Jew and an atheist, and insisted that he was certainly not trying to “convert” the students. 

It’s too bad that Dr. Roth did not ask his students about their reasons for shying away from any discussion that smacks of “religion.” I can think of a number of reasons why the students might have been reluctant to engage, but I’m only guessing.

The first that comes to mind stems from the high probability that most professors at Wesleyan, then and now, neither believe that they have an immortal soul, nor think that they require salvation. Any student professing such beliefs would likely be ridiculed by teachers and regarded as a pariah by their classmates. Actually, I think that the animus towards religious subjects was inculcated even before the students went to college. It is part of the media world that they have inhabited since childhood.

Despite Dr. Roth’s good intentions, I doubt if he ever would have become President of Wesleyan if he had been a church going Methodist. Even though the school is one of many named after the eighteenth century religious reformer, a school like Wesleyan would probably never name a President today who shared John Wesley’s beliefs or concerns.

Practically all the great institutions of learning in Europe and America were founded by churches, but today a belief pervades modern society that there is a total disconnect between religion and reason when it comes to the search for truth. Nevertheless, our universities have not become centers of reason and science. Credulity of all kinds still prevails. Someone once said, “when people cease to believe in God, they will believe in anything.”

Look at the popularity of the supernatural and occult in films and videogames today. Vampire films are box office bonanzas. My grandson went to a Jesuit Catholic university where he could hardly find a course on Catholicism to fulfill his religious studies requirement. He had to fall back on a course on Voodoo taught by a truly committed believer. 

Ironically, Dr. Roth admitted that despite his atheism, he still felt the need to say the Jewish Kaddish for his deceased father. Of course, tradition would not allow him to say it alone and so he had to find a group of ten. It wasn’t easy for a non-practicing Jew but he eventually found a group. Not only was he able to say the prayers for his father, but he also found in the group a congenial community. So Dr. Roth is not really an atheist. Either he reserves his religion for special situations, or he just has gone back to ancestor worship, the earliest form of religion.

I suspect similar motives drive modern Catholics when they go to Church on Ash Wednesday. Years ago on a visit to our daughter in California, my wife and I attended the local church, St. Joseph’s Basilica, in Alameda. The church is an enthusiastic community made up of the descendants of the original settlers of the island right next to Oakland, as well as more recent immigrants from Mexico, the Philippines, China, and Vietnam. The dynamic but self-effacing young pastor from India scheduled five masses for Ash Wednesday. The morning mass that we attended was packed with people waiting to receive the ashes on their foreheads.

Maybe people don’t like to think about the soul and salvation any more but down deep they seem to want to be reminded that they are dust and to dust they will return.

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Ash Wednesday

 

                                             

A few years ago around Ash Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by Michael S. Roth, the President of Wesleyan University, on the reluctance of modern students to consider topics like the soul and salvation. In addition to his administrative duties Roth taught a class in which he tried to inculcate historical imagination in his students by asking them to consider and discuss the questions that deeply concerned people in the past. However, he was disconcerted when he discovered a particular blind spot among his students.

Whenever he tried to discuss the interest of philosophers and other thinkers in the past with questions about the soul and salvation, he found a decided reticence on the part of his students to engage. Although usually eager to discuss any of the pressing issues of the day, the students generally clammed up and avoided eye contact by looking down into their notebooks. 

Unfortunately, Roth did not go into the reasons for the students’ reserve but took most of his essay explaining why it was important to understand why such issues had such importance to great thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. Roth admitted that he was a secular Jew and an atheist, and insisted that he was certainly not trying to “convert” the students. 

It’s too bad that Dr. Roth did not ask his students about their reasons for shying away from any discussion that smacks of “religion.” I can think of a number of reasons why the students might have been reluctant to engage, but I’m only guessing.

The first that comes to mind stems from the high probability that most professors at Wesleyan, then and now, neither believe that they have an immortal soul, nor think that they require salvation. Any student professing such beliefs would likely be ridiculed by teachers and regarded as a pariah by their classmates. Actually, I think that the animus towards religious subjects was inculcated even before the students went to college. It is part of the media world that they have inhabited since childhood.

Despite Dr. Roth’s good intentions, I doubt if he ever would have become President of Wesleyan if he had been a church going Methodist. Even though the school is one of many named after the eighteenth century religious reformer, a school like Wesleyan would probably never name a President today who shared John Wesley’s beliefs or concerns.

Practically all the great institutions of learning in Europe and America were founded by churches, but today a belief pervades modern society that there is a total disconnect between religion and reason when it comes to the search for truth. Nevertheless, our universities have not become centers of reason and science. Credulity of all kinds still prevails. Someone once said, “when people cease to believe in God, they will believe in anything.”

Look at the popularity of the supernatural and occult in films and videogames today. Vampire films are box office bonanzas. My grandson went to a Jesuit Catholic university where he could hardly find a course on Catholicism to fulfill his religious studies requirement. He had to fall back on a course on Voodoo taught by a truly committed believer. 

Ironically, Dr. Roth admitted that despite his atheism, he still felt the need to say the Jewish Kaddish for his deceased father. Of course, tradition would not allow him to say it alone and so he had to find a group of ten. It wasn’t easy for a non-practicing Jew but he eventually found a group. Not only was he able to say the prayers for his father, but he also found in the group a congenial community. So Dr. Roth is not really an atheist. Either he reserves his religion for special situations, or he just has gone back to ancestor worship, the earliest form of religion.

I suspect similar motives drive modern Catholics when they go to Church on Ash Wednesday. Years ago on a visit to our daughter in California, my wife and I attended the local church, St. Joseph’s Basilica, in Alameda. The church is an enthusiastic community made up of the descendants of the original settlers of the island right next to Oakland, as well as more recent immigrants from Mexico, the Philippines, China, and Vietnam. The dynamic but self-effacing young pastor from India scheduled five masses for Ash Wednesday. The morning mass that we attended was packed with people waiting to receive the ashes on their foreheads.

Maybe people don’t like to think about the soul and salvation any more but down deep they seem to want to be reminded that they are dust and to dust they will return.

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Are Women Human?

 

                                     

 

Despite the widespread criticism of Christianity today, there is no doubt that it introduced a revolutionary improvement in the role and status of women. Where did early Christians get this revolutionary idea? I think we have to go to the Source, to the actual words and actions of Jesus in the Bible. Dorothy Sayers, a famed Christian author of the twentieth century, wrote the following in an essay entitled, “Are Women Human?”

Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man—there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them. Never flattered or coaxed or patronized: who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as “The women, God help us!” or “the ladies, God bless them!”; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything “funny” about woman’s nature.

But we might easily deduce it from His contemporaries, and from His prophets before Him, and from His Church to this day. Women are not human; nobody shall persuade that they are human; let them say what they like, we will not believe it, though One rose from the dead.

Perhaps Sayers, like many today, included St. Paul among those contemporaries of Jesus who did not understand, especially when we consider the famous passage in his letter to the Colossians where he advises wives to be subordinate to their husbands. 

For years I was a lector or reader at my local Catholic church. Ever since the Second Vatican council it has been the practice for the lector, usually a layperson, to read the first two scripture readings at Sunday Mass, after which the priest or a deacon reads the gospel. Reading the scriptures out loud to a congregation made them more meaningful to me than just hearing them read by others at Mass. I liked doing it but old age and diminishing eyesight made me give it up a few years ago.  

However, something happened last weekend that made me recall an incident from my lector days. It was on the feast day of the Holy Family that usually occurs on the first Sunday after Christmas. I was in the sacristy before Mass looking over the readings when the young priest who was to preside approached me and told me to read the short form of the second reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. He must have seen a look of surprise on my face and added that the American Bishop’s Council allows shortened versions to be read on occasion. He didn’t exactly explain why but in this case the passage that I was to omit included St. Paul’s advice to wives to be “subordinate” to their husbands, a passage that even many Catholics today find objectionable.

I was younger then and declined to do it. Since childhood I had been instructed by priests and bishops to regard every word of the Bible as inspired, but apparently some words were not as inspired or sacred as others. It was jarring and I told him to find another lector and went back to join my wife in the congregation.  In the years that have followed it has become standard to omit the controversial scriptural passage. This past weekend, it was again omitted.  In all these years homilists just choose to ignore or omit this and other difficult passages that might be offensive to modern ears.  Rather than explain, discuss, or confront the difficult passages head on, they just ignore or omit. 

This failure was one of the reasons that I began to compose my own reflections on the Sunday Mass readings many years ago. Last Sunday I posted on the historical “context” of St. Paul’s words on my Sunday, Sunday blog.  I tried to explain why Paul would have advised wives to be subordinate to their husbands, but also why his advice to husbands to “love your wives” was revolutionary.

I certainly agree with Sayers about Jesus, but I believe that if we look at the whole context  of the life and writings of St. Paul, we will see that he was truly following in the footsteps of his Master. Despite today's popular opinion, Christianity elevated the role of women not only in society but also in the eyes of her husband. St. Paul understands the teaching of Christ to mean that Christian men must give up their whole lives for their wives and families, a rare thing in any time. The relationship in a family should consist of "heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience." A family built on these virtues won't have to worry about who's the boss. 

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Feast of St. Francis

Today is the feast fay of St. Francis, or S. Francesco in Italian. Actually, Francesco was not his real name but a nick-name meaning "little Frenchman". His father was a merchant from the Italian city of Assisi but his mother was a French woman from Provence.

For the past three years I have been transcribing and posting passages from the extraordinary travel books of Edward Hutton, an Englishman who early in his life fell in love with Italy and its people. Coincidentally, I just brought the series to an end with a series of posts from "Assisi and Umbria Revisited,' a 1953 remake of his 1907 "Cities of Umbria." 

Hutton began his Umbrian journey at Assisi, and ended it at  Gubbio, a small town visited by Francis. As usual, Hutton related the history of the town, and described its various churches and artworks. He also quoted at length the familiar story of the taming of a ferocious wolf by St. Francis. But below is a less familiar story as well as a tribute to S. Francesco that brings his book to an end.

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Just before I crossed the watershed I came on the hill-top to a mass of building with tower and bell-turret which proved to be the Badia di Vallengegno, but of old was the monastery of San Verecondo, where it is said S. Francis was employed as a scullion after he had been thrown into a ditch full of snow by brigands on his first wandering to Gubbio. He was thus employed, according to Thomas of Celano, for several days, “wearing nothing but a wretched shirt and desired to be filled at least with broth. But when, meeting with no pity there, he could not even get any old clothing, he left the place (not moved by anger but by need) and came to the city of Gubbio, where he got him a small tunic from a former friend of his. But afterwards,” says Thomas, “when the fame of the man of God was spreading everywhere, and his name was noised abroad among the people, the prior of the aforesaid monastery, remembering and realizing how the man of God had been treated, came to him and humbly begged forgiveness for himself, and his monks.” …

 

It is said of S. Francis that death, which is to all men terrible, and hateful, he praised, calling her by name: “Death, my sister, welcome be thou”; and that one of those best-loved brothers saw his soul pass to heaven in the manner of a star, “like to the moon in quantity, and to the sun in clearness”. And however we may think of him, whether he is to us the most beloved saint in all the calendar, or whether he is merely a delightful figure, a little ailing, a little mad from the Middle Age, he went honourably upon the stones, as Voragine reminds us. “He gadryd the wormes out of the ways, by cause they should not be trodden with the feet of them that passed by.” He called the beasts his brethren; and in all that age of passion and war, of immense ambition and brutal hate, he loved us as Christ has done, and was content if he might be an imitation of Him. “He beheld the Sonne, the Mone, and the Starres, and summoned them to the Love of their Maker.”

As we pass up and down the Umbrian ways, it is his figure which goes ever before us.

 

                               Que pacis crescit oliva

                   Regnat amor, concors, gratia, vera fides.*

 

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*           Where the olive tree of peace grows

           Love, concord, grace, and true faith reign.

 

 

Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 221,233-234.

The Problem of Pain

 

Camille Paglia

Personal issues so far this year have made it difficult for the Weekly Bystander to regard current events, especially politics, as little more than trivial.  For the time being, I would just like to reproduce an old post or two that still have relevance for me at this time, and may have some interest for readers. Below is one from September, 2019.

The Wall Street Journal weekend edition regularly features an interview with a prominent personality on its op-ed pages. Last weekend the interview was with Camille Paglia, the well-known feminist author, lecturer, and professor. At the age of 72 Paglia has come under fire from students at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia who are demanding that she be fired. Despite her feminist credentials, some of Paglia’s positions, like her praise of Capitalism, are no longer in favor. 

I do not wish to get involved in feminist debates but would just like to discuss a seemingly unrelated incident in Paglia’s life that she remembered quite vividly. In fact, she regarded it as a turning point. At the age of fifteen she was in religious education class when she had the nerve to ask the teacher, an Irish Catholic nun, a very challenging and provocative question. In those days we would have called it a smart-ass question. Naturally, the nun reacted and condemned Paglia roundly in front of the class for even asking such a question. That was it for Paglia. From that day on she would have nothing to do with Catholicism. 

Coincidentally, over the weekend a friend told me of an acquaintance who left the Church because of another seemingly trivial incident. The woman had invited a soloist to sing at her wedding but after the Mass was over, the priest chided her for taking business away from the church’s own soloist. Boom! That was it. She has never gone to church again. Reactions like these are not unusual. In my lifetime I have heard of many such incidents or personal confrontations that led people to stop attending church. It is usually not a question of belief or doctrine, nor does it mean that they become bad people.  

There are more serious reasons for losing one’s faith in God or ceasing to practice the faith of your fathers. Perhaps the greatest is the problem of pain and suffering. In an email exchange, also over this weekend, an old friend told me that he had trouble believing in God and that he no longer attended church. He wrote, “If God is so good, how do you explain little children suffering from cancer?” He also asked me to explain all the pain and suffering that will result from natural disasters like hurricane Dorian.

The problem of pain and suffering, some call it the problem of evil, has been around since the dawn of recorded history. My wife and I sat down over the weekend to watch a National Geographic documentary on great animal migrations. After ten minutes we had to shut it off. The carnage and killing were horrific.  The crocodiles, leopards, and other animals did not seem concerned with the problem of pain. Human beings are obviously just as capable of inflicting pain and suffering but I believe that we are the only animals who think or worry about it.

Philosophers, theologians, and scientists have grappled with it and no one has yet come up with a completely satisfactory answer. Certainly, I haven’t. In ancient times personal suffering and natural disasters were attributed to the gods. The gods were either punishing people for their misdeeds, or were merely malevolent, playing with humans like a cat with a mouse.

In thinking about my friend’s question, I wondered if the answer could be found by considering the example of Jesus, the founder of Christianity.  No matter what you think of Jesus, his approach to the problem of pain and suffering was revolutionary. Even a cursory reading of the gospels indicates that Jesus was a healer. When confronted with pain and suffering, he healed the pain and did not blame God or anyone else. 

He gave sight to a man who had been blind from birth. Ordinary people claimed that the blindness was the result of the sins of the man’s parents. Jesus would have none of it, and just restored his sight. When a man suffering from paralysis was brought before him, rather than blaming him for his sins, he forgave them and then cured his illness.

When he heard that people had been killed when a tower collapsed in a nearby city, he told his hearers that the people who died were no more sinful than anyone else. I’m sure he would have said the same about the victims of hurricanes and earthquakes. His response to the problem of pain and suffering was to heal and minister to the suffering. He instructed his followers to do the same.

In the teaching of Jesus, God is not the cause of suffering but the cure. Those who believe in Nature believe in a cruel god who never forgives. We speak of Mother Nature but she is not the kind of mother any of us would like to have. Scientists may tell us that many must be sacrificed to cleanse the herd in the interests of survival and progress but something inside of us tells us to deplore pain and suffering and do our best to prevent and heal. That something inside of us is as much a sign of the existence of a loving God as anything else the philosophers and theologians have ever thought of. 

Camille Paglia’s wise-ass question to the poor nun, who was giving her life to educate children like her, was: “If God is infinitely forgiving, is it possible that at some point in the future He will forgive Satan?” It is true that the nun should not have blown up, especially since she only had to turn to her catechism for the simple answer. In the catechism Catholics are told that God must forgive those who repent and ask for forgiveness, and so He certainly would forgive if Satan repents and asks for forgiveness. Unfortunately, Satan, like many wise fifteen-year-olds, will have none of it.

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Pope Benedict XVI, R.I.P.

The death last week of former Pope Benedict XVI at the age of 95 brought to mind a post written almost 10 years ago on the occasion of his dramatic resignation of the Papacy. Reading it over now, it sounds like an obituary.

The unprecedented retirement of Pope Benedict XVI has led to innumerable articles on the man and his pontificate. I am not able to discuss the achievements of his pontificate, but I would like to say a few words about my own impression of the man.

 I can’t say that I have any personal knowledge of the former Pope but unlike most commentators and pundits, I have at least read a couple of his books. A few years ago I read his Jesus of Nazareth an obvious attempt by the Pope to bring the results of a lifetime of work and study to a non-scholarly audience. I can’t say that I can remember much of the book or the Pope’s arguments. I do remember thinking that the Pope’s great intellect and learning were obvious on every page.

 When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected in 2006 at the age of 78, I was contemplating my own retirement after 36 years as a financial advisor. I had always advised my own clients that they should regard retirement not as an end, but as a new beginning; that it might finally give them an opportunity to do something that they had always wanted to do.

 In my own case I had been a scholar and teacher before circumstances forced me to change career and enter the world of financial service. It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me, but after a successful 36 years, I looked forward to getting back to history, my first interest. So it was easy for me to sympathize with Cardinal Ratzinger on his election. Here was a great, great scholar who had given up most of his last years in the service of the Vatican, an often-thankless job. He was lampooned and derided even by Catholics. During the pontificate of John Paul II, wasn’t Cardinal Ratzinger often referred to as the Vatican’s Rottweiler? Just when he might have thought that at age 78, he could enter into a peaceful retirement, return to his study, and complete his life’s work, he gets elected to one of the most difficult jobs on earth.

 Isn’t it incredible that even those who dislike the Catholic Church and especially the Papacy seem to expect so much from it? But what can a Pope actually do or accomplish? He cannot resort to the usual weapons at the disposal of governments today whether they are despotic or democratic. He has no taxing power. He cannot put you in jail or confiscate your property if you fail to put money in the collection basket. Despite what many non-Catholics might think he cannot order Catholics around or tell them what to do. He can advise but they often refuse to consent with no apparent loss or penalty. Some are shocked that the Catholic Church believes that the Pope is infallible. But this famous doctrine has only been used on one occasion since it was promulgated in 1870 by the first Vatican Council. Big deal.

 Upon his election Cardinal Ratzinger chose the name Benedict and he became the sixteenth Pope of that name which literally means “say good.” He said that he was thinking of the famous saint who founded western Monasticism back in the last days of the Roman Empire. But he was also thinking of Pope Benedict XV, a little remembered Pope who early in the twentieth century strove unsuccessfully to keep the great powers of Europe from plunging into the First World War. It was obvious that the new Pope saw himself as a peacemaker both within his own troubled Church and in the World. He did his best in the past seven years, but finally old age caught up to him and he wisely decided to step down.

 His life reminds me of a wonderful short story by J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of the Lord of the Rings, and the Hobbit. This little-known story, “Leaf by Niggle” is about a man who is attempting a painting of a leaf. He regards it as his life’s work but throughout he is constantly interrupted by the needs and demands of family, friends, and even strangers. He dies with the painting of the leaf unfinished but that’s not the end of the story. In the end we see Niggle in Heaven working on a painting of a huge tree containing thousands of beautifully painted leaves. Let’s hope that Pope Benedict will one day come to his own reward. Well-done, good and faithful servant. Rest in peace.

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