Deacon’s Blog

From Albany Catholic: Col. (ret.) Ann Wright, author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience

Tuesday, August 12, 7:00 - 9:00 pm
Albany Public Library
161 Washington Avenue, Albany

Ann Wright will speak at the Albany Public Library while she is in the Capital Region for the Kateri Tekakwitha Peace Conference. Ann Wright’s new book, Dissent: Voices of Conscience, profiles of those in government and active-duty military who have spoken out, leaked documents, resigned, or refused to deploy to protest the war in Iraq. The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression named Dissent their book of the month for February 2008.

Daniel Ellsberg wrote the foreword. “This … illuminating and remarkably impressive … book should be leaked into the government. … This book could awaken … officials to withdraw their complicity and … tell the truth to [the public]. This country will not escape further human, legal, and moral catastrophes, or preserve itself as a democratic, constitutional republic, if that does not happen. If you’re at all like me, you will have a whole set of new heroes when you finish reading this. …Dissent: Voices of Conscience could change your life.“

Which in my opinion is the correct course. Those who protest should not do so by running away but by standing up. Of course you have to be prepared to suffer the consequences of standing up. Not something unfamiliar to those who understand the Christian way of life.

The main purpose of icon-writing is, according to artist Christine Simoneau-Hales, drawing closer to God through the process of prayer—and painting God’s word in visual form. This exhibit at RPI’s Chapel + Cultural Center features works by both Simoneau-Hales and her students. They created—“wrote”—iconic paintings in the ancient style, using egg tempera, and real gold leaf to adorn the halos. Students may have begun with the same tracings, but differences in the final works range from folds in the robes to facial expressions as each student expresses a unique message—not to mention the many hidden meanings and symbols in these color-specific paintings.

In the Gallery at the Chapel + Cultural Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 125 Burdett Avenue, Troy, NY 12180. The exhibit runs from 1 July – 1 August. For more information call 518-274-7793.

The Young Fogey links to several articles describing recent secret meetings between Church of England prelates and the Vatican. See Several Church of England bishops in secret talks with Vatican.

As commentor JohnT points out, in relation to Damian Thompson’s blog entry on this issue:

Cardinal Hume pointed out to Anglicans who were on the point of converting in the early 1990s that ‘Catholic doctrine is not an a la carte menu’ - and this is still true.
Nor is conversion a matter of ‘accommodation’.

Which is my thought exactly. This type of action requires a wholesale reordering of all that these prelates say, do, and believe (if it is indeed a true conversion rather than a lifeboat option).

What must they give up to come to Rome? What might they gain? Where might they find shelter?

The things they must give up are rather lengthy, but let’s focus on a few:

• Their status as Bishops (and their entire ordained life). Look at the Anglican Use (a terminal proposition) in the United States. Any clergy member coming over has to start over in new orders. There are no direct conversions “in Orders.”
• Their position as insiders. While they are part of the CofE they are on the inside for better or worse. In the R.C. world they will be oddities and outsiders, with their wives and children, their traditional stylings, and everything else that is part and parcel of who they are. The world’s Bishop’s Conferences will treat them like the fairly odd arms-length cousins you hope you only have to see at weddings and funerals.
• The 39 Articles et. al.
• As noted regarding the Anglican Use, their “traditions” such as the BCP and everything else Anglican, are terminal. Once they and their fellow converts die off there will be no more Anglican Use as no married men will be ordained nor will the BCP and Anglican Use be taught to up-and-coming celibate priests (except as a historical anecdote).

Still in all, I imagine that the issue of shelter is the real key. Is Rome the best shelter for these Bishops and their people? What other options might they have?

Certainly they cannot look to the Old Catholics of Europe (Utrecht v. 2.0). They are on the same track as the balance of liberal European/American Anglicanism. No port in the storm there. They could look to Orthodoxy who might accept them economically, conditioned on their acceptance of Orthodox Catholic faith and doctrine. The Russian Church or Antioch would be their best bet with Western Rite offerings. In any event I would imagine that the bishops could only come in as priests in an Orthodox solution. Then there is the PNCC ? Anyone for a read of the Declaration of Scranton and a trip across the Susquehanna?

In large measure, because of the long term relationship between Anglicans and the PNCC (back in the day when 99.9% of the faith was held in common), they would find a true Catholic home in the PNCC, and one where Anglo-Catholics and the PNCC share much more in common than the Bishops, their priests and people would find elsewhere. Why not study our history and our common faith.

Of course the choices are not easy regardless of the path because conversion is a full-on process. You may take a choice because you are fleeing a fire, but eventually you have to own up to the truth of your conversion. Bishops have a higher duty here because of their Order and their knowledge. Do you truly accept and believe the thing you purport to accept and believe in your conversion. I can say this much as a convert to the PNCC, if the conversion is true you gain access to the uninterrupted faith of the Catholic Church and its Traditions. What you give up counts very little if that is the Lord’s calling.

All conjecturing aside, I hope and pray that these Bishops, their priests, and their congregants find a home in the Catholic Faith. Whether Roman, Orthodox, or PNCC, confidence in faith and the commonly held doctrines of the first thousand years is a great joy. As Jesus told us in this weekend’s Gospel: “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:30).

We pray Thee, O God, not that Thou should help us carry out our own plans, but that we may be used in serving Thine: not for man’s victory over man, but for the triumph of Thy righteousness and Thy Kingdom. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. — From A Book of Devotions and Prayers according to the use of the Polish National Catholic Church.

Freedom of speech and our ability to imagine a better tomorrow. Note: video contains an off-color phrase…

If you get a chance check out his other videos here. I liked the one about Mitt Romney and “Secret secrets of scientologist …” He also does a good parody of George Bush as Harry Potter. The language in most is rough so use caution.

Brooklyn, June 17th through the 29th, 2008.

TR Warszawa, Poland’s most exciting theater company, arrives in New York with a spectacular production of Macbeth that boldly reinvents the classic for the twenty-first century. With a huge cinematic sweep, the production takes multi-media theater to the limit, directed by the gifted Grzegorz Jarzyna. A dramatic two-story set, video walls, special effects, an extraordinary, layered soundscape, and a deep well of acting tradition transform Shakespeare’s web of intimacy, politics and the supernatural into a contemporary living film.

TR Warszawa, formerly Teatr Rozmaitosci in Warsaw, has for decades been one of Poland’s best-known stages. It has secured a reputation as a contemporary theatre that is open to new ideas while preserving theatrical traditions. TR has made its mark in Europe and won numerous awards at national and international theatre festivals. Poland’s most popular stage directors – Grzegorz Jarzyna (artistic director since 1998, since 2006 also general director), Krzysztof Warlikowski, and Krystian Lupa – as well as the country’s most famous actors, work at TR.

St. Ann’s Warehouse will create an outdoor theater in the Civil War-era Tobacco Warehouse, located in Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, across the street from St. Ann’s Warehouse. This historic site’s romantic, open air and column-free structure is well-suited to St. Ann’s visionary programming, at the gateway to the Brooklyn Waterfront.

Macbeth will be performed in Polish with English supertitles.

St. Ann’s Warehouse is at 38 Water Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn. For ticket information and directions, call (718) 254-8779.

This historic production is sponsored in part by the The Kosciuszko Foundation.

Yesterday I picked up a link from the Young Fogey which led me to a lengthy article at Rod Dreher’s site.

Mr. Dreher writes:

“The Crisis of Our Age” proclaimed [Pitirim] Sorokin’s view that the West was in a terminal crisis, but that its resolution, however shocking and traumatic, would not mean the End, as is often thought, but only the transition to a new and very different phase of that civilization. “Crisis” is a summation of Sorokin’s cyclical theory of social development. He believed that civilizations cycle through three basic states, based on the dominant view of the nature of truth within that civilization…

The article is one in a series of many I have been reading lately that choose to see the future, the mid-term future, as a period of marked change in the social order. This change will be brought about by a collapse of the current order brought about by global or regional traumas, or economic factors that evidence the inability of government and markets to maintain the status quo.

There are all sorts of reasons for this, and I ascribe much of the problem, the impending breakdowns, to the breakdown in core societal components - family, reproduction (having children), and community. These components were the building blocks for the outward successes of the last hundred or so years. We enjoyed the outward successes all the while distancing ourselves from those core components, hating God, home, and country because they got in the way - they required hard work and commitment to something outside ourselves. We replaced something we saw as the drudgery–cum–slavery of our parents and grandparents lives with an idealism (all must be made equal and free - in the sense of the world) that takes little work beyond a few donations and some sloganeering now and then.

Toward the end of the article Mr. Dreher notes

We will know that the transition is well underway, Sorokin says, when the most creative minds turn from engagement with the fields of endeavor that serve sensate ends, and are instead attracted to ideational/idealistic pursuits. We will know the transition is well underway when we see among us new St. Pauls, new St. Augustines — and new St. Benedicts.

Then he quotes from Alasdair MacIntyre’s final lines in “After Virtue”:

A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead . . . was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. . . . This time, however, the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another — doubtless quite different — St. Benedict.

Interestingly I was reading an entry from one of the people I follow on Twitter, Brad Abare and came across his wife’s blog - Jamaica Abare. She writes in Monastic Movements:

I’m not sure why the book Punk Monk resonated so deeply with me, perhaps because it chronicles what God is doing in England which appeals to my perception that the British are a little ahead of the game intellectually. I’m somewhat familiar with the ethos of the new monastic movements that my generation is embracing, but this quote in Punk Monk somehow gives some intellectual girth to what my hear draws me to.

It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who prophesied:

The restoration of the church will surely come from a sort of
new monasticism, which has only in common with the old
an uncompromising attitude of life according to the
Sermon on the Mount in the following of Christ. I believe it
is now to call people together to do this

If the monastic movements of the past were driven by a need to provide an alternative to the compromise in the Church, then how much does our own predicament in the modern church parallel a need for an alternative…

This desire for an alternative is not born out of rebellion against the modern church, but rather a recognition that an organic gathering of people, not simply around weekly services, but around community meals, prayer, and acts of justice and mercy provide greater opportunity to see and be Christ to our hurting neighborhoods and world.

So I wonder, Is the monastic way of life, communally simple and Christocentric, the way forward? Is that the way by which civilization will be maintained and by which the building blocks of the “new world order” will emerge? Is it happening to you, where you live, among your associates? If so, in what manner?

Over the next few weeks I will attempt to explore Bishop Hodur’s take on this subject as spelled out in his epic The Apocalypse of the XXth Century.

From the Minneapolis - St. Paul Star Tribune: After warning, family of autistic teen attends different church

The mother of a 13-year-old autistic boy who was banned by a court order from attending services at a Roman Catholic church in Bertha, Minn., woke up Sunday determined to take her son to mass.

But Carol Race changed her mind when Todd County Sheriff Pete Mikkelson met her at the end of her driveway Sunday and told her she would be arrested if she brought her son, Adam, into the Church of St. Joseph.

Instead, Race took Adam and her four other children to mass at Christ the King Church in nearby Browerville, Minn. “It occurred to me that if I step foot in [St. Joseph], they will arrest me and I won’t end up going to mass anyway,” she said.

A court hearing on the matter has been continued until June 2 so that Race can hire an attorney.

The dispute has drawn attention to what Race and advocates for the disabled say is a lack of education and understanding about autism. Race said that even though her son, who is home-schooled, sometimes acts up in church, the experience benefits him.

…

The Rev. Daniel Walz, who did not return calls left at the Church of St. Joseph parish office, wrote in court documents that Adam’s behavior was “extremely disruptive and dangerous.” He alleged that Adam, who is more than 6 feet tall and weighs over 225 pounds, spits and urinates in church and has nearly injured children and elderly people.

In an affidavit, Walz wrote: “The parish members and I have been very patient and understanding. I have made repeated efforts through Catholic Education Ministries, Caritas Family Services, and most recently, sought to try and mediate the matter with the family to ask them to voluntarily not bring Adam to church, but it has been to no avail.” The Diocese of St. Cloud said in a statement that the restraining order, issued May 9, was “a last resort…”

I’ve been following this for a few days, since it showed up on ABC. In reflecting on this my gut instinct, and the reason this gives scandal, is that the parties involved have lost sight of their Christian witness as outlined by St. Paul:

And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity. — 1 Corinthians 13:13 (Douay-Rheims)

The priest is relying on a legal approach - one of the great problems among some R.C. clergy. The family is relying on its needs, and knowing the struggle of families dealing with autism I know it is hard to see beyond the immediacy of the struggle. Both need to to step back and pray for the gift of charity. Both need to act in charity toward the other. Both need to look to what builds up the Christian community, not just the parish or family, but the whole of the community. I begrudge neither. I just pray that they witness together - in mutual charity.

On the Bishop of Rome’s visit:

“Clearly, they like the pope, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to do everything he tells them,” said Father Thomas Reese of Georgetown’s Woodstock Theological Center. “People ultimately are going to do what they think is right.”

As quoted in the Bloomberg article: Benedict to Confront Skeptics, Scandal in U.S. Trip. I guess that in Fr. Reese’s book Roman Catholics in the U.S. are really Protestants with funny rituals?

On Bush being a closet Catholic:

You can’t be Catholic and un-Catholic at the same time.

From a comment on Bush a “Closet Catholic”? at Pro Ecclesia * Pro Familia * Pro Civitate. I would only differ in saying that yes you can - when you sin.

Check out the photo from Iraq at the Young Fogey’s site — vastly sad, vastly disturbing.

This is what it is all about. It is not mysterious “terrorists” lurking in the shadows. It is not about a few bad apples in a large society. It is about killing, and the vast number of innocents, in the vastly larger context of a society, all of whom are suffering.

It is these three children today. There will be more tomorrow, more the day after, more every day on into the future. Perhaps John McCain is right - it will be 100 years.

Whether we personally pulled the trigger, dropped the bomb, placed the mine or not, we got the ball rolling based on lies, false pretense, and a concerted effort to keep citizens of the United States in a state of fear. We went against the advice of world leaders and the pope. We initiated a war of aggression, not of defense. We gave those who harbor evil the excuse they needed, just as we have provided the excuse for the fathers and uncles of those children. Therefore we must admit our mistake. We must extricate ourselves. We started this war. Certainly we cannot end it just by leaving — but if one less dies because we leave then something real will be achieved. If one moment of truth emerges because we leave, then something real will be achieved.

God forgive our complacency in the face of the evil we are doing.

From the Young Fogey:

Why?

Exactly - a picture and a word that encompass the entire morass in Israel, Korea, Vietnam, the former Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, and just about anywhere else the U.S. decides to intervene and sacrifice its lives and wealth. While I fully decry threats to “freedom” and all other sorts of badness in the world, it is not incumbent upon us to save others from themselves. We can do charity, we can act as honest agents in negotiations, we can advocate, but we do not have to fix everything. We cannot. We have enough to take care of here at home. Being wealthy and powerful does not come with a demand that we be interventionist. It comes with a responsibility to ourselves and to charity.

The Passion as waterboarding

Somewhere in the Middle East, Jesus Christ is strapped to a bench, his head wrapped in clingfilm. He furiously sucks against the plastic. A hole is pierced, but only so that a filthy rag can be stuffed back into his mouth. He is turned upside down and water slowly poured into the rag. The torturer whispers religious abuse. If you are God, save yourself you f***ing idiot. Fighting to pull in oxygen through the increasingly saturated rag, his lungs start to fill up with water. Someone punches him in the stomach.

Which is quoted off another site. If you read the comments attached to the article you see a kind of quibbling that misses the bigger issue. To me the bigger issue is this: When you look at the folks “over there” or imprisoned at Guantanamo or held at other “black sites” what do you see? The quick and easy answer is “the enemy” or even “my enemy.” Look closely. Jesus actually looked like these folks. Jesus spoke in dialects much like they do. Jesus ate a lot of what they eat, and kind of lived like they do to this very day. Jesus was innocent as some of them are. Jesus was tortured, although innocent, just like some of them are. Jesus was killed, although innocent, just like some of them are.

We are all created in His image - even my enemy. He also told us that what we do, even to the least of our brothers, we do to Him. In the end we have to ask ourselves, in light of what we know, do we have reason to hold these people prisoner, and even if we do - which is justifiable - why torture them? Take a breath and hold it for a couple minutes - and while doing so pray - Lord, help me to see you, even in my enemies. Help me to witness Your love and teachings even though my neighbors, village, city, state, country, and church do not want to hear it.

The image is an artist’s rendition of what Jesus may have looked like (from the BBC). Looks familiar - no?