A Brief Musing about Rejection and Conflict

 

The Paulus Institute made a measured declaration about their disappointment over the DC Cardinal's prohibition of our Vigil Mass of the Assumption planned for our Country's National Shrine. They did well to do so and their statement fits the bill. My own disappointment over this bureaucratic dismissal of good people's best efforts has no real importance. I do not see myself as a man on a mission somehow stymied by whomever. I would have loved to enjoy this gathering of good and believing people in Mary's "house" in Washington. It was not to be. For me personally, that sort of sums it up.

As such, I have nothing to say beyond the statement of the Paulus Institute, but as I ponder this picture from the Corpus Christi procession at the Sacred Theology Conference back in June in Spokane, I wonder why some are so taken up with trying to "scatter the sheep": Quare fremuerunt gentes... Why would anyone pretending to be of Christ's Church lash out at the lambs?

In his NY Times article of yesterday, Ross Douthat seems to think that those who, regarding the motu proprio, prognosticate the "success" of this latest attempt at suppression of the Mass of the Ages do not have all of the present variables in hand, which make our world different from that of France in 1848. I think he knows what he is about.

Another day is coming. Be of courage, little flock!

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The Life of Katharine Drexel

 

THE GOLDEN DOOR

by Katherine Burton, 

1957, P.J. Kennedy and Sons, New York

The hope which motivates me to review the books I read has always been that of encouraging others to read them and draw joy or inspiration from them. One presupposition, then, is that a book be accessible. Most of the books I read are easily obtained on Kindle, although I do occasionaly buy actual printed books. On the rare occasion, when I buy out of print books, it is usually because I have become enthused enough by someone else's review to go hunting for the book. Actually finding these rarer books and at a manageable price, however, is not a foregone conclusion.  

In the case of St. Katharine Drexel, I have had this particular book on my wish list for a long time, not because of any rave reviews I had read, but because the saint herself is mine as a South Dakotan. This so also because of one of our priests whom I knew from my youth, a former chancellor of the Diocese of Sioux Falls originating from Boston, who had found his way to South Dakota and to the priesthood through the encouragement of Mother Katharine, to spend his summers from Boston College out here on the reservations.

As the price had come way down and in celebration of retirement, I bought the book and now have read it. The author, Katherine Burton has done an incomparable job. 1957, just two years after the foundress' death, was thirty years distant from Mother's beatification in 1988 and a scarce half century before her canonization. Nevertheless, her masterful biography of this great American woman makes for enjoyable reading and the best sort of hagiography. 

Beneficence and social justice certainly mark the life and work of St. Katharine Drexel, but with absolute finesse, the author makes clear that at the center of her life and mission was her love for and attentiveness to Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

"The Golden Door" is the door of the Tabernacle, the image and the inspiration in part for Katharine's vocation coming from a dream of her stepmother Emma Drexel, so binding her to her patron saint: "Go before the Golden Door-The Tabernacle-and say, 'In Thee I place my trust.'" St. Catherine of Siena.

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Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel

the Saint Michael in my chapel

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. 

May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

   When we are young we often resent having our judgment or insights discounted given our presumed lack of maturity or experience. If a priest has never worked in a parish or if he has never been entrusted with the administration of a parish, it is generally classed as a deficiency in his general formation or preparation for ministry. As I had five years at home before returning to Rome for graduate studies and for my life-long career as a Vatican diplomat living and working in various countries, people usually hesitate to level against me this dismissive criticism in discussing my pastoral action and fruitfulness in ministry. The five years between 1976 and 1981, plus two years in Prague administering the little English language parish there, seem sufficient to have given me a pass. The real question is, despite credits earned and curriculum vitae, whether one has learned life's lessons and truly has acquired wisdom. In point of fact, many times despite one's experience, life lessons are not learned because of one's superficiality or lack of reflection on life and lessons to be learned.

    I would like to think I have learned a few things in life during my years abroad and in fact I am convinced that I have, but my first six months of retirement here at home in South Dakota and a direct experience in one parish and substituting elsewhere has made clear to me at least one thing which previously in life I had either ignored, missed entirely or played down in my overall reflection on Catholic life. I suppose, I could be partly excused not so much for my forty year absence from the upper Midwest, but because of the different cultural experiences which have been mine, especially in Ukraine and Central Europe, most recently in Switzerland. Even though they were all Catholic experiences, there were some significant differences. By way of one example, I totally missed the gravity of the resistance on the part of some lay people and priests in the United States to the Communion rail, both as a church fixture and as a powerful sacramental.

    If a hundred years ago, I had claimed that rejection of the Communion rail was of the Devil, people could have dealt with it. Today, such statements are attributed to the likes of sad old ladies, craky old men, and out of control young priests cruising for cancellation by their bishops. Saying that a rabid rejection of the Communion rail is fiendish would not pass either, let alone were I to call into question that seemingly detached and pseudosophisticated dismissal of the rail by some rather urbane members of the clergy as the little folk's attachment to something either nostalgic and/or passe'. Part of the reason for this is our loss of a sense of the transcendant, of the consequences beyond this world of our thoughts, actions, and omissions. We fight our battles without an eye to the world to come and this is not exactly something new. The problem is perennial, but seems to have engulfed more and more of Catholic society going back at least a century.

   Now already for a long time, it is my impression that "confrontation and conflict" seem to be recurring themes providing color and drama generally for discourse on matters of world view, but particularly when matters of the faith come to talk. In this exercise and depending on which side of the argument you stand, individual or personal bravado and no small amount of rancor toward the little folk or toward the haughty and woke powers that be seem to be in the ascendancy. Beyond the given topic, whether it be liturgical reform, some aspect of moral teaching, all manner of issues related to the so-called culture wars, in defense of justice and truth, one might say that a major concern when people argue on life and faith seems to be striving to win the argument by their own force of will or finesse. The confrontational character of the approach of countless lay people to all matters Catholic is defiant and has reaped a harvest of priests who either scorn them or dare not speak of right and wrong or of objective moral truth in the presence of their menacing fists, figurative or not. It would seem that you can only speak tongue in cheek of having God on your side.

    One notices among more conservative Catholics the inclination to attempt to defend the faith at all cost, to vanquish the foe, or at least to strive to do something of that sort. What I am alluding to however is problematic, not because it is permeated by zeal for the Lord's House but because it smacks of the viscerally human and the this-worldly, losing itself in confrontation and conflict. This type of bitter argument is notable for its anarchic premises. Even at its most conservative or traditional it bristles at the very thought of a teaching authority holding forth within the Church. We are on our own and hence exasperated, being far from the supernatural perspective implied in consciously lining up with the Virgin in battle array (thinking of the imagery of the Legion of Mary). Despite much effort on the part of some, we as a whole are still not back to invoking St. Michael the Archangel and recognizing our struggle as absolutely exalted, pitting us, with Michael as our hero, against the principalities and powers who turned their backs on God. I hope that makes more understandable the claim that off-hand or otherwise rejection of the Communion rail is of the Devil. Denying the dominion of the Evil One here on earth does not simplify matters one iota.

    People very often go on the defensive, sometimes and not seldom they seem to be overwrought and to give the impression of being under siege, not so much by the forces of evil but simply by this corrupt generation, and that hence we must be living in the worst of all times. The temptation to panic and to outright despair is the greatest I can remember it in my 70+ years, even if the first 20 of childhood and youth were thankfully quite sheltered from life's storms. The conflict today seems not so much rooted in God as in ignoring His role in the course of human events, while fixating on the bad will of human actors whose resources far surpass mine (lump them together and call them oligarchs or big tech, if you will). I do not know if a statistical analysis would be of any significance or help in clarifying what I am driving at, but it would be curious to have figures and compare the frequency of the use of words in everyday correspondence or literature, between today and two generations ago, like "perpetrator" or "predator" when applied not to animals but to fellow human beings. It would be my impression that common discourse today on the human plain is much more inflammatory and brutal, because the field of battle has become all too this-worldly.

   Don't get me wrong! It is not my intention to dismiss people's worries and deny personal responsibility for improving the state of our world and the Church. I think we have many and great reasons for concern. But we cannot dismiss St. Paul: "For our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." (Eph. 6:12)

    Do you pray the prayer of St. Michael the Archangel every day? Have you sufficiently searched your own soul in response to the reports of failing belief in the real Presence of Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar? Have you asked yourself why these rumors calling into question the wisdom and beauty of the counsel of Pope Benedict XVI in his blessed motu proprio Summorum Pontificum? Why would anyone fight the fruits of enrichment, which are tending toward a better ordering of Novus Ordo liturgy, more devotion, better music, worship ad Orientem and hence focused on Christ, to the return to use of Communion rails? I am sorry, but I find no diplomatic way in describing disrespect for the TLM except to see it as diabolical. Why else are traditional Catholics not accorded the same indifference which masquerades as tolerance so liberally accorded to others who would harm us or worse if they could or when they can?

    As I say, "confrontation and conflict" leave me cold and suspicious. What is at stake is not my thing but the thing of God, if you will. Make the prayer to St. Michael your own and recite it daily with fervor. Join ranks in the fight against Satan with our angelic hero. Our fight is against spiritual forces, for it was not the Council at the middle of the last century which tore out Communion rails and stubbornly refuses to bend the knee to the Lord of Life. Pray and ally yourself with Michael!

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