Cardinal Zen Ze-kiun Interview

The First Things weblog (from some reason I don't like calling it just a blog, weird) has another excellent offering for us Catholic freeloaders today in the form of a lengthy interview with Hong Kong's Cardinal Zen Ze-kiun. From reading it, you get the feeling that Zen is a very humble, careful, caring and smart person. It's a fascinating insight into the trials and triumphs, however few there may be at the moment, of the Catholic Church in China.

I can't help but wonder if the Church in China is experiencing what our Church in Canada, or the Church in the UK or the USA, will suffer through in the coming years, if as expected, unrestricted Catholicism becomes public-enemy number one to our governments. Certainly we have seen this happen in Boston and in the entire UK, where the local and national governments there have tried to force Catholic adoption providers to send children into homosexual relationships. In response, I'm sure you know, the providers chose not to continue their services, and, in Boston, have all closed down. Some call it the hard line approach, but you can't begin to compromise Catholic teaching just to make a few political points.

Which is something Zen says the Church in China didn't always do well, the hard line stuff. It cooperated frequently with the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, a government controlled body, in order to carry out its mission, even at the expense of its mission. This resulted in the two Churches, the Patriotic and the Underground, both of which, confusingly, have valid sacraments. The Patriotic Church receives its funding from the government, is controlled by the CCPA, and basically is the bureaucracy which administers the Church, officially, in China. It recently caused much uproar by allowing the illicit ordination of a bishop at the behest of the Communist government. If we look at things comparatively, we can see just what could happen in the West if the Church didn't take a hard line approach and maintain its autonomy.

Latin Revivalism a la Benedict 16

Some of my friends at Catholic Explorers have been discussing the impending motu proprio which is expected to permit the use of the Tridentine Rite without permission of a bishop. As it stands now, if you want to have the Mass said according to the Old Rite, you need the permission of your local bishop. It's expected that the motu proprio will change all that.

I don't know about you, but I would love a bit more Latin in the liturgy. My favourite hymns and prayers are in Latin, and I've always felt that it lends a much more eternal and sacramental feeling to the Mass, at least for a regular Joe-60 Ouncer like myself. Speaking a language that is not your mother tongue is always a special experience, bewildering and difficult at times yes, but always worth it. Imagine how it would be to speak the mother tongue of your faith! (leaving aside Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek of course)

So back to my friends. One thinks that the use of the Old Rite will lead toward proper liturgical evolution, a process that was upset after Vatican II. The other is more skeptical, feeling that a direct indult requiring the use of Latin in the Novus Ordo Mass would be more effective and rule out the possibility of creating a Tridentine and New Order factional divide within the Church. Those are both compelling arguments and I think both are right. The thing is, I'm pretty sure we're supposed to be using some Latin in the Novus Ordo Mass already, which makes me skeptical of how effective any direct indult would be.

I personally think Ol'Ben is up to something a little more indirect, which would make sense if he were truly wishing to revitalize the process of liturgical evolution, and heck, we all know it's more his style to do things subtly than with a bang. Visit Catholic Explorers for more on this discussion.

Preaching: Let's get happy

Diogenes posts at CWNews that a new group, the College of Preachers, has published a new guide. This new guide discusses ways Catholic priests can improve their homilies. Great, you'd think, crummy homilies are a problem, and priests clearly need some sort of encouragement, advice to make themselves more adept at the oldest and second most visible part of their vocation. So enter the College's guide to preaching.

The guide sets out to help priests 'double-check' facts on areas which are out of their technical expertise. Again, great, right? Well no. The guide is designed so that say, Fr. Doe wants to preach about the mortal sin of mixing your recycables, he knows where to look to make sure he doesn't confuse the hard plastics with the corrugated cardboard. Yea, not what's really needed.

The problem most priests seem to have with preaching is actually coming out and saying something worthwhile. There's simply too much therapy and not enough instruction. As much as we like a chuckle, 4 jokes does not a good sermon make. Nor does reminding us that all we need is love and that we're all pretty good deep inside - that's what our saccharine hymns are apparently for.


Unfortunately it's just too easy to offer up a few heartwarming and mindnumbing comments, or make an empassioned pseudo-political speech against the most recognizable media-inflated issue de jour. But that's not effective preaching, and no matter accurate your facts are, the congregation still suffers.

I've noticed many younger priests to be much better preachers than older priests. I don't know why that is; maybe there's an a problem of priests burning out, especially after what the Church and Western culture has been through the past 40 years. But what these new priests seem to understand and the older ones don't, is that simply preaching the Gospel and Catholic tradition is and will always be the best choice. Not that reminding Catholics of God's demand that we, for example, be stewards of the Earth in the context of climate change isn't all that bad, rather, it's that people are inured to that sort of thing. We get that stuff from our friends, the media and family outside of Church and we don't need it every Sunday too.

edit: If you really want a guide to preaching, start by reviewing this.

More on Catholics and the American Supreme Court

The extra-smart Robert Miller weighs in at First Things on the growing trend to point out that 5 of the assenting judges in the Gonzales v. Carthart decision are practicing Catholics. Miller takes issue mainly with what he sees as the trend beneath the trend, the trend that is to entirely dismiss the opinions and decisions of others, rather than engaging them, on the mere basis that they do not agree with your own opinions and decisions.

There's a lot of that going on these days, and Miller is right on point when he calls this trend out as the real culprit, rather than anti-Catholicism, which by the way is a growing phenomenon in the West once again. Up here in the wild and wintery climes of Canada, we socially conservative and Christian folk are used to such dismissals-sans-debate. The perfect example of course is the non-debate which 'occurred' during the same-sex summer of 2005. Perfectly ordinary Canadians like myself were simply told that a debate had occurred and the issue was settled and closed. Where, who, how and when were not acceptible questions - the debate had happened and the issue was closed. Nothing to see here, folks.

And so it is with the PBA ban in the US. Pro-choice commentators have spent little energy actually discussing the procedure, probably because they spent all than enery in 2003 during Congressional discussion on the ban. Back then it was shown to the entire nation that no scientific or moral evidence exists which necessitates the availability of PBA. So perhaps that defeat is in the mind of pro-choicers when they voice their disgust to the Carthart decision, and hence the lack of discussion.

But anyway, I still think it's an interesting phenomenon. The pro-choice comments, with precious few exceptions, have instead run along these lines: The ban is wrong because it goes against the unlimited abortion license and anyone who disagrees with that is wrong. Why? Because abortion is sacrosanct and modern woman requires its availability. Paint me unconvinced.

Female Deacons

My friend Charles has an excellent post over at the Catholic Explorers blog on the recent article by Phyllis Zagano on the possibility of a female diaconate. Check it out.

Charles asks, drawing upon the Zagano's arguments, whether or not there are duties which a deacon performs that could be done by a woman. I think there are, but they all seem to be the ones that any lay person could perform regardless of sex. And then there's the issue of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, of which the permanent diaconate is a part, which requires a male recipient to be licit and valid. Obviously the Catholic Church does not redefine sacraments, and even though the Second Vatican Council did allow for the return of the ancient practice of the permanent diaconate (as opposed to the transitional diaconate), this minor alteration was simply a renewal of a practice which simply fell by the way side in the early middle ages.

All in all, I think the argument Zagano tries to advance is juvenile, optimistic, dishonest and purely academic. There will never be female deacons in the fashion Zagano wants - especially since she seems to view the diaconate as a halfway house to priesthood. So what could a girl like Zagano do in this crazy Church of ours?

What Would Jesus Do?

I remember being at some sort of the Catholic youth day around when I was 9 or so when I first was asked the question. If I recall correctly, a friend and I had just been caught teasing another boy by one of the adult chaperones. Rather than remonstrating us for our transgressions and cutting us off from the lemonade (which is a harsh and brutal punishment considering the hummidity of mid-summer Ontario), this overly pleasant woman simply asked us, What Would Jesus Do?

What Would Jesus Do? pretty much summarizes my catechesis from ages 9 to 18. Stole some pencils at school? What Would Jesus Do? Confessed that you had lied to your parents about doing your chores? What Would Jesus Do? Initially I took the question seriously. I did know that Jesus would not have intentially roofed little Chris Mackay's tennis ball during lunch time recess. But by the time I was 10, the effect had worn off. I had realised that I could easily rationalize What Would Jesus Do? into whatever sort of justification I needed at the time. Sure, I would think, Jesus wouldn't have roofed the tennis ball, but Jesus knew I was just having fun with my friends, which is OK. And besides, Jesus forgives, right?


It's wasn't long after that I completely lost whatever relationship I had with Christ as a child. The hardwork my parents had done teaching me the faith was undermined as my religious education became more and more the domain of well-meaning but woefully mistaken elementary school teachers. If Catholicism boiled down to What Would Jesus Do?, well then Catholicism as I perceived it became What Would Colm Do? and What Would Jean Chretien Do? It's not as if I actually knew all that much about Jesus in the first place. I had read some of the Gospels, but I had never studied them. I knew some of the Commandments, but it was never an educational requisite to have to learn them by memory. What Would Jesus Do? became incredibly detrimental to my development into a Catholic adult because I didn't know what Jesus would have done in anycase. The assumption is that children know that Jesus is an all around good guy who didn't do anything wrong, which is true at a very base level. Yet the assumption forgets that the definition of wrong is subjective to every single person. Without a properly formed conscience or at least the strength of a vigorous catechetical program, What Would Jesus Do? becomes one of the most destructive philosophies to hand down to children.

Latin, Motu Proprios, and the Spectre of the Vicious Traditionalists

I admit it; I'm not a big fan of the way the Novus Ordo Mass is celebrated in most parishes I've visited. The high decibel folky whole wheat hymns, the experimentation, the dissonance of kneelers, standers, and kneelers & standers, it all gets to me a bit. But no matter how awful I make the situation out to be, it's still the Mass and Christ is still present. Even though the sense of sanctity is often difficult to find, it is still Mass. So those times when I'm fed up with what I think is shoddy rubrics or whatever else I can nitpick out of the liturgy, I simply remind myself where I am and what I am witnessing, and thank God for it.

I admit this too: I am eagerly awaiting the Motu Proprio and, hopefully, a more traditional method of celebrating Mass in the Novus Ordo. And I admit that I am partially mystified by the Pope's apparent dallying on the release of the Motu Proprio. I've read Spirit of the Liturgy and assume I know how Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger felt about the state of the liturgy, so why is it taking so long?

I think it has to do with charity - specifically a lack thereof. In my blogosphere travels and in my conversations with Catholics of all persuasions, I've noticed that people who I consider 'serious about their faith' sometimes err on on the side of hyper-criticality. Nothing is acceptable to them other than what they consider the pure, unadulterated use of Latin, Liturgy, etc, etc. Priests who are otherwise good and orthodox men, are singled out for abuse and ridicule because of the inclusion of the classical guitar, bongo, flute, or trumpet instead of, or even along with, the pipe organ. Priests who administer the sacraments with reverence are criticized, by the very Catholics who actively receive these sacraments, because their pronunciation of 'agnus' wasn't correct. I understand that many Catholics simply want the liturgy to be conducted properly, it's just that often many Catholics, like me, go too far.

Richard Neuhaus on Pope Benedict on Iraq

Fr. Neuhaus expands upon Pope Benedict's mention of the Iraq War during his Easter Sunday address. You can read it here - but I want to comment on a corollary effect of the Pope's statement. Neuhaus points out: "... it is galling when Catholics and others who are usually blithely indifferent to church teaching seize upon a papal opinion with which they agree and, suddenly becoming hyper-infallibilists, elevate it to dogmatic status." Galling, indeed.

Falling Like Domino's...

Fr. Joseph Fessio was fired yesterday from Ave Maria University. Fessio is a well known figure in Catholic circles - he studied under Pope Benedict, founded Ignatius Press, and contributes to First Things on occasion - and as such is well respected amongst other scholars and professors. I've heard it more than once that Fessio was instrumental in keeping some of the faculty after the contentious move from Michigan to Flordia.

It's a shame he's gone. The last thing we Catholics need is another bitter division. Hopefully more details will be revealed over the next few days.

The Jesus Tomb

I'm never surprised that the latest effort to debunk traditional and historical Christianity comes during Lent. It's almost as if the devil is that stupid (or that smart) that he fills the airways with the most childish, non-sensical anti-Christian propaganda during our forty days of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer.

Last year it was The Da Vinci Code and the Gnostic Gospel of Judas. This year it is the Jesus tomb. James Cameron, director of Alien 2 and Titanic, has made a 'documentary' about the discovery of the real tomb of Jesus Christ. This tomb contains a sarcophagus inscribed with the names Mary, Jesus, Joseph and Judas. It also apparently says that Mary and Jesus were married, and Judas was their son. Within the sarcophagus are the remains of the man and woman.

Now our first instinct is probably to ask: So what makes this tomb so special? Well, it was found in Jerusalem and might date from the time of Christ. So 2+2=1283, and therefore this is tomb of Christ, and therefore Christ didn't resurrect Himself, and therefore he was married to Mary Magdelene, and therefore he had a son, and therefore Christianity is wrong canweallgobacktocommunismplease.

Cameron and those involved seemed to have conveniently missed a few important issues which complicate, if not directly invalidate, their account . First, there is the question of why a Galilean is buried in Jerusalem. Second, there is the question of why a woman would have been buried with Him, since after the Crucifixion, Christ's followers went into hiding and were persecuted for the next several decades. Third, there is the question of names. Mary, Jesus, Joseph, and Judas were at the time the most popular names in Israel amongst the Jews.

Scholars and journalists are already rounding, and Cameron et al. are circling their wagons. Cameron will no doubt contain to claim that this is just his take, albeit his take that he is aggressively selling through the MSM as fact. In the end, the movie will excite the exciteable, while the rest of us finish up our Lent and get down to celebrating the Glorious Resurrection.

Carrying Christ With You

I attended midday Mass today for the first time in ages. Partly because it's Lent and partly because my wife asked me to meet her there and partly because we have a new priest from Nigeria who is turning a lot of heads with his infectious proclaiming of the Gospel.

Midday Masses are usually rather tame. At my parish it is always the vernacular, or low, Mass, which means that most of the responses are spoken rather than sung. But today was much different. Our Nigerian priest, Fr. Clement Nwonkwo, is quite literally on fire for Christ. I wasn't prepared; for Fr. Clement, for Mass, or for Jesus.

Just to cut it short, Fr. Clement made a very simple yet poignant statement during his homily. He said that we must always remember that after the Eucharist is consumed, we carry within us the Resurrected Christ. Are we bringing Christ to other people? Can people discern that we have been to Mass? I have to admit that in 25 years of my life, I have never heard a better explanation for the Mass and its effect on us than that.

God Bless you, Fr. Clement.

"Radical Christian students hurl their bodies at innocent Muslim's cab"

I stole the headline right of off The People's Cube. You can't improve upon perfection.

Here's the rundown: Two students found themselves in a fierce religious argument with their taxi driver. No big deal, right? No, big deal. The taxi driver happened to be a Muslim and the student-fare-payers Christian.

Read the rest here.

The Pope's Lenten Message

And only a few days late!

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

"They shall look on him whom they have pierced" (Jn 19: 37). This is the biblical theme that this year guides our Lenten reflection. Lent is a favourable time to learn to stay with Mary and John, the beloved disciple, close to him who on the Cross, consummated for all mankind the sacrifice of his life (cf. Jn 19: 25). With a more fervent participation let us direct our gaze, therefore, in this time of penance and prayer, at Christ Crucified who, dying on Calvary, revealed fully for us the love of God. In the Encyclical Deus caritas est, I dwelt upon this theme of love, highlighting its two fundamental forms: agape and eros.

God's love: agape and eros

The term agape, which appears many times in the New Testament, indicates the self-giving love of one who looks exclusively for the good of the other. The word eros, on the other hand, denotes the love of one who desires to possess what he or she lacks and yearns for union with the beloved. The love with which God surrounds us is undoubtedly agape. Indeed, can man give to God some good that he does not already possess? All that the human creature is and has is divine gift. It is the creature, then, who is in need of God in everything. But God's love is also eros. In the Old Testament, the Creator of the universe manifests toward the people whom he has chosen as his own a predilection that transcends every human motivation. The prophet Hosea expresses this divine passion with daring images such as the love of a man for an adulterous woman (cf. 3: 1-3). For his part, Ezekiel, speaking of God's relationship with the people of Israel, is not afraid to use strong and passionate language (cf. 16: 1-22). These biblical texts indicate that eros is part of God's very Heart: the Almighty awaits the "yes" of his creatures as a young bridegroom that of his bride. Unfortunately, from its very origins, mankind, seduced by the lies of the Evil One, rejected God's love in the illusion of a self-sufficiency that is impossible (cf. Gn 3: 1-7). Turning in on himself, Adam withdrew from that source of life who is God himself, and became the first of "those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage" (Heb 2: 15). God, however, did not give up. On the contrary, man's "no" was the decisive impulse that moved him to manifest his love in all of its redeeming strength.

The Cross reveals the fullness of God's love

It is in the mystery of the Cross that the overwhelming power of the Heavenly Father's mercy is revealed in all of its fullness. In order to win back the love of his creature, he accepted to pay a very high price: the Blood of his Only Begotten Son. Death, which for the first Adam was an extreme sign of loneliness and powerlessness, was thus transformed in the supreme act of love and freedom of the new Adam. One could very well assert, therefore, together with St Maximus the Confessor, that Christ "died, if one could say so, divinely, because he died freely" (Ambigua, 91, 1956). On the Cross, God's eros for us is made manifest. Eros is indeed, as Pseudo-Dionysius expresses it, that force which "does not allow the lover to remain in himself but moves him to become one with the beloved" (De Divinis Nominibus, IV, 13: PG 3, 712). Is there more "mad eros" (N. Cabasilas, Vita in Cristo, 648) than that which led the Son of God to make himself one with us even to the point of suffering as his own the consequences of our offences?

"Him whom they have pierced"

Dear brothers and sisters, let us look at Christ pierced on the Cross! He is the unsurpassing revelation of God's love, a love in which eros and agape, far from being opposed, enlighten each other. On the Cross, it is God himself who begs the love of his creature: He is thirsty for the love of every one of us. The Apostle Thomas recognized Jesus as "Lord and God" when he put his hand into the wound of his side. Not surprisingly, many of the saints found in the Heart of Jesus the deepest expression of this mystery of love. One could rightly say that the revelation of God's eros toward man is, in reality, the supreme expression of his agape. In all truth, only the love that unites the free gift of oneself with the impassioned desire for reciprocity instils a joy which eases the heaviest of burdens. Jesus said: "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself" (Jn 12: 32). The response the Lord ardently desires of us is above all that we welcome his love and allow ourselves to be drawn to him. Accepting his love, however, is not enough. We need to respond to such love and devote ourselves to communicating it to others. Christ "draws me to himself" in order to unite himself to me, so that I learn to love the brothers with his own love.

Blood and water

"They shall look on him whom they have pierced". Let us look with trust at the pierced side of Jesus from which flow "blood and water" (Jn 19: 34)! The Fathers of the Church considered these elements as symbols of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. Through the water of Baptism, thanks to the action of the Holy Spirit, we are given access to the intimacy of Trinitarian love. In the Lenten journey, memorial of our Baptism, we are exhorted to come out of ourselves in order to open ourselves in trustful abandonment to the merciful embrace of the Father (cf. St John Chrysostom, Catecheses, 3, 14ff.). Blood, symbol of the love of the Good Shepherd, flows into us especially in the Eucharistic mystery: "The Eucharist draws us into Jesus' act of self-oblation... we enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving" (Encyclical Deus caritas est, n. 13). Let us live Lent, then, as a "Eucharistic" time in which, welcoming the love of Jesus, we learn to spread it around us with every word and deed. Contemplating "him whom they have pierced" moves us in this way to open our hearts to others, recognizing the wounds inflicted upon the dignity of the human person; it moves us in particular to fight every form of contempt for life and human exploitation and to alleviate the tragedies of loneliness and abandonment of so many people. May Lent be for every Christian a renewed experience of God's love given to us in Christ, a love that each day we, in turn, must "re-give" to our neighbour, especially to the one who suffers most and is in need. Only in this way will we be able to participate fully in the joy of Easter. May Mary, Mother of Beautiful Love, guide us in this Lenten journey, a journey of authentic conversion to the love of Christ. I wish you, dear brothers and sisters, a fruitful Lenten journey, imparting with affection to all of you a special Apostolic Blessing.

Telus Cancels the Smut...

... after receiving hundreds of complaints and facing the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cancelled accounts.

Who said Canadians couldn't get down to business?

Lent

Tersely stated, Lent is about sin. It is a 40 day period in which we as Christians examine our lives and attempt through fasting, alms giving and prayer to separate ourselves from the clutches of sin. We become purified and prepared for the Death and the Resurrection. Christ did it, and 2,000 years later, we do it.

And for 2,000 years Christians have done it, and did it better than we in the West (I'm excluding the Latin South) do it now. Today, we have almost a full litany of excuses not to be serious during Lent, discomfort being the one I hear most oft cited by my friends and family (and by myself). But that's the point, to experience discomfort. Consider a litmus test for what you should be giving up and doing during Lent.

Lent reminds us that Christ is near us always. Lent gives us the opportunity to really say 'I am a serious Christian' through the discomforts and sacrifices. Remember that the next time you're thinking that the mandatory Ash Wednesday fast seems just a little too 'difficile'.

Anglicans to Cut Their Losses....

... and bring their problems to us. Here comes everybody.

An exciting proposal/report/announcement has been leaked to the press by someone (or something) at the Anglican Communion meeting in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. The document, prepared by several Anglican and Catholics bishops, calls for a full reconciliation between the Communion and the Church.

Pardon, me?

I was under the impression that Anglican-Catholic relations were increasingly strained because of recent decisions made by several Anglican bishops. I'm sure you're aware of them too. Personally, I think this development, and the timing of the release, comes down to the work of one person.

edit: It turns out the Times correspondent who first reported the story was a little off in his analysis. The report simply details the progress of the Anglican-Roman Catholic discussions and, rather than calling for unification, urges Anglicans to think more about the ministry of the Papal Office, and for Catholics to pray for them. Well, pretty much anyway.

Catholics Taking Over Britain...

A report issued yesterday announces that the Catholic Church is set to become the largest active religious group in England and Wales. Bolstered by massive immigration from poorer Eastern European countries and former colonies, the Catholic population is expected to swell in the coming year.

Not since the Reformation, or as I call it, Hank's Infertility, have Catholics been the largest religious group in England. Maybe this will get all my non-practicing Catholic cousins over there back into pews. Safery in numbers and all that.

Vagina Monologues Banned...

... from Notre Dame and St. Louis University. At both schools, the play failed to receive the facultying sponsoring all theatrical events, even those of dubious quality, require in order to perfrom on campus.

What I can't understand is why something like the V-Monlogs were permitted at those schools anyway. Does anyone really think that a 2-hour expose of sexual abuse, depravity, and gender-based hatred really benefitted anyone?

Anglican Discommunion

As I write, Anglican delegates from around the world are meeting in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, to discuss what to do with those pesky Episcopalians.

Or at least that's how the story has been explained to me. I think the real issue is whether or not the Anglican Experiment really has any gas left in its tank. It first pretended to be Catholic, then half-Catholic/half-Protestant, and now, it appears, a third-Catholic/a third Protestant/a third New Age. Cardinal Newman saw this and many other crises developing over a hundred years ago; today, throngs of Anglican priests and parishoners are flocking into the Catholic Church, the situation having become so grim.

A Solution to the Nun Shortage...

In the past 40 years, according to some reports, the number of women in religious orders has dropped by about 60%. Schools have closed, hospitals have become nationalized, cloisteries were uncloistered. Every week we hear about yet another nun-less parish, another monastery-sans-monastics.

Thankfully for the unEnlightened Church, I have the answer: Married and male nuns.