Per Christum

As I was driving to liturgy in the pre-dawn hours yesterday, I was struck by the link between liturgy and beauty. The photo to the left is St. Nicholas of Myra by day. (The tree in the photo is gone, having been removed to make room for Artim Hall.) And right now, it’s covered in snow save for the dome.
You see, sunrise was about 10:20am yesterday. Liturgy was at 10. We left the house at 9, to be there for divine praises at 9:30. And as we turn down arctic, we spot the dome, lit from within, glowing. The photo to the right shows it (but not well):

This “old” parish, just 50 years old, is a joyous failure and wonderful success. It is a home for beauty. After all, a quick look at the iconostas will show that it is beautiful. Here are the Royal Doors: Yes, very Ruthenian – you can see through them. But beautiful none the less.

The beauty inside is telling about the parish. Parishioners built it. To be a house of beauty which houses a beautiful liturgy. Our dome, the only one I’ve ever heard of being lit from within yet still made of metal, is a tribute to our love of beauty in the name of the Lord.

So, as I drive through the dark of night to Liturgy, that glowing dome has many meanings. I’ll list them:

• Here is the Church. We are a beacon on a hillside!
• The Light of Christ is here.
• There is beauty here for all to see, come and see!
• We have seen the True Light! And we reflect it from within, as the dome does its light.
• Yes, Liturgy is going to happen today!
• You made it down the hill alive again.

You see, St. Nick’s sits in a shallow and narrow valley. It’s near downtown. It’s in an area called mid-town, an area that was wilderness at the edge of the city when the parish was built from an old army mess hall. A parish built with a mission: to convert the Orthodox. It failed. Abject failure at the apostolic mission given by Bishop Nicholas + Elko. Rev. Fr. Artim was sent to shut it down. But that young vostochnik (”Eastern”, a reference to being very much like the Orthodox) refused to give up. He worked as a pharmacist, and built a parish that is still going many years later, and 5 years after God called him home. The Roman Bishop recommended him for, and he received the title Monsignor. He long wanted a mission in the Mat-Su valley, since his parish covers ALL of Alaska. Well, the mission is a reality. The bills are being paid on-time, and without Rev. Fr. Hornig working a civil job.

And that dome, the pride of the parish, is emblematic of all of this. Success from failure. Growth when ordered to die. And tomorrow, for the feast of the Circumcision of the Lord, and of St. Basil the Great, I will load the family up, and drive through the darkness to a Divine liturgy starting before sunrise again. And experience beauty in Liturgy, in a beautiful church, with beautiful people, in the beauty of the night. On a Tuesday morning. Starting with the sight of the dome.

One of our readers, Nana R, a former Jehovah’s Witness, has a blog chronicling her journey into the Catholic Church. I am reading her blog regularly now to follow her journey, and find her story fascinating.

Actually, I have always been fascinated by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. When I was in 8th grade, I was embracing the Christian faith for myself, as I had been “saved” in November of 1989 at age 11. I became, for lack of a better word, overbearing. My parents told me to cool it and stop being so zealous, but I was convinced that I was the only one around who was truly “on fire” for God. One of my main interests was cults, including the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I read a lot about them (considering I was only 13). My favorite book was Why I Left Jehovah’s Witnesses by Ted Dencher, although I also enjoyed other books, including one by John Ankerberg (who, unlike other cult books I was reading, included the Catholic Church as a “cult”).

I even tried some of my book learning on real, live, Jehovah’s Witness girls my age, who didn’t seem too interested in debate. Even though I later moderated (and, until later in college, effectively abandoned any Christian faith I had, partly because of how I came to view my youthful fundamentalist period as pretty silly), I still have an interest in the theology of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Back in 1991, I was convinced that JWs simply “misread” the Bible, and I (of course) read it correctly. I would never use this argument today, because I am aware that every Christian group out there claims to simply “read the Bible correctly,” which leads to a lot of arguing in circles. While I believe the New World Translation is a horrible translation, and that the Jehovah’s Witnesses do read the Bible incorrectly, most JWs themselves would obviously disagree.

Nowadays, I tend to see the Jehovah’s Witnesses as simply another American sect rooted in late-19th century apocalyptic hysteria. These groups (which include the Adventists and Christian Scientists), besides embracing a certain futurist interpretation of the New Testament, are heavily influenced by the Enlightenment, which means that they, like the Gnostics of old, elevate the “mind” over physical things, and as such, embrace now outdated scholarship from that time which traced the roots of many Christian practices to pagan origins. They also shun ritual, tradition, and externals.

From both a Catholic and historical standpoint, Jehovah’s Witness claims make little sense. That God’s organization is headquartered in Brooklyn shows just how American and novel this denomination is. I could never seriously consider the concept that the Church right after Christ went into apostasy and then was restored in a sect in America in the late 1800s, although quite a few denominations founded in this period make this claim. Again, an American sect founded in the late 1800s is neither universal (catholic) nor historical.

Many JW practices are not very Catholic or historical either. The practice of allowing only “the 1914 generation” to receive communion is pretty odd, and comes from past failed predictions of the end of the world, when the Watchtower claimed that the 144,000 of Revelation were alive on earth during the return of Jesus in 1914 (later they claimed he returned invisibly, since, as is obvious, nobody saw Jesus return in 1914). I can’t imagine that very many JWs from that time are alive today, and receive communion, but considering the rationalistic, enlightenment background of the Watchtower, I doubt rituals are viewed as that important anyway. However, if I were a JW, I would wonder why virtually nobody receives the communion that Christ commanded his disciples to continue receiving after his death.

As is well-known, JWs also do not celebrate holidays. The Witnesses I knew in grade school did celebrate “Teddy Bear Week,” but not much else, although I am sure there is a website somewhere detailing the pagan origins of Teddy Bear Week! I have written on the so-called pagan origins of Christian holidays before, but I think something NanaR wrote, gets at the heart of why the JWs don’t celebrate holidays, and why they their theology is so peculiar: they don’t believe in the incarnation. I definitely agree with Nana R, and to expand her point, I think the Jehovah’s Witness denial of the incarnation, and thus the implications of the incarnation, explain a lot of their theology and praxis.

I would argue that most Christians whose churches were born during the 1800s do not have a strong theology of the incarnation (and this includes many fundamentalists and evangelicals), which prevents them from understanding the Catholic and Orthodox love of ritual, externals, festivals, fasts, and so forth. Even Protestants from the 16th and 17th century seem surprisingly Catholic, ritualistic, and sacramental compared to Protestant movements of the 19th century.

It is funny, because even when I would read about the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their views on Jesus, I tended to focus on the deity of Christ as opposed to his incarnation. I don’t recall even reading much about the incarnation of God in Christ when I was studying the evangelical response to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I don’t know if I could even tell you what the incarnation was. I am sure most of the books I read back in 1991 took the incarnation for granted, but the fact that it and its implications were rarely discussed shows me that many of those writing against the Jehovah’s Witnesses probably came from denominational traditions that owe a lot to the enlightenment trends that contributed to the founding of the Watchtower.

However, I think it is impossible to understand the Jehovah’s Witnesses unique theology and practice without looking at their views about the incarnation (or really, a lack of a theology of the incarnation). So many of their ideas flow from the denial of this doctrine: opposition to sacraments, dislike of the cross, refusal to celebrate holidays, avoidance of blood transfusions, believing that Jesus was resurrected spiritually, their prophecy-heavy futurism, etc. The question remains, do the Jehovah’s Witnesses dislike the incarnation because they have a strong dislike of the created world, or does the dislike of material things flow from their lack of an incarnational theology? It is hard to say, since both are so intertwined. Either way, while they are Christological heirs to the ancient Arians (in denying that Jesus is fully God), they are also the heirs to the ancient Gnostics and Docetists.

In the early Church, the Gnostics and Docetists denied the Incarnation. While they did not have a problem with Christ’s divinity per se (as the JWs do), they had serious issues with the created world. That God would become flesh, in this evil world was so troubling that they believed that Jesus only appeared human. Orthodox Christians throughout history have seen things differently, although there have been Gnostic tendencies even among the orthodox. Saint John and Ignatius of Antioch both took great pains to emphasize that while Jesus was God, he was also fully human, pre-and-post Resurrection. Ignatius incorporated the following hymn into his Letter to the Ephesians:

There is one Physician
who is possessed both of flesh and spirit;
both born and unborn;
God existing in flesh;
true life in death;
both of Mary and of God;
first passible and then impassible,
— Jesus Christ our Lord.

During the 8th century, when the Iconoclast controversy was raging, similar debates were raised as were during the time of the Gnostics. Was it appropriate to create images of Jesus? What St. John of Damascus and others pointed out was that we are material beings, and on account of the Incarnation, God redeemed material things for His use. In his In Defense of Icons, John of Damascus writes about how it is through the visible, created order, that we learn of, worship, and encounter the invisible God, since we are material beings:

For the invisible things of God since the creation of the world are made visible through images. We see images in creation which remind us faintly of God, as when, for instance, we speak of the holy and adorable Trinity, imaged by the sun, or light, or burning rays, or by a running fountain, or a full river, or by the mind, speech, or the spirit within us, or by a rose tree, or a sprouting flower, or a sweet fragrance.

Thus, unlike the Gnostics who focused exclusively on spiritual formulas and secret prayers, Catholic and Orthodox Christians understand that God uses physical things for salvation: sacraments, the cross, people, the Bible, and of course, the physical incarnation of his son! Flowing from this comes an appreciation of physical stuff, like icons, foods, incense, relics, and even holidays and holiday customs. Again, if a person lacks a theology of God truly becoming flesh in our physical world, then he is not going to have context to understand how someone can take a tree into one’s home and decorate it in honor of Christ. He will have no understanding of the importance of taking bread and wine, blessing them, and through God’s blessing transforming them substantially into the body and blood of Christ. I have raised this point on the blog before, but I believe that the main difference between denominations founded in the late 1800s, heavily influenced by the enlightenment, and Catholicism and Orthodoxy, is a sacramental mentality, which of course is rooted in the incarnation. The former denominations seek to ignore or escape the physical world (whether through an over-focus on future prophetic events or denying the possibility of sacraments, and so forth), while Catholics and Orthodox recognize that God not only redeemed creation, but he also uses it! God could have sent an angel to save the world, sending him with some secret formulas for salvation and liberation from the physical world, but instead, he sent his own Son, himself fully God, into the created world, becoming one of us! A theology rooted in secret formulas and lacking the incarnation is not only anti-material, but impersonal (since God couldn’t be bothered to become one of us to save us), while the Catholic view recognizes that God works in the created order, and is highly personal. I should note that many Protestants share the Catholic view in this case.

While the denial of the incarnation is certainly not the only reason why Jehovah’s Witnesses believe what they do, I believe it is a major factor, a factor rooted in enlightenment American religion at the time the Jehovah’s Witnesses were founded.

Catholic leader claims Poles could split Church

The leader of the country’s Roman Catholics has sparked a row by accusing immigrants of creating a separate church in Britain.Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, urged the Polish community to do more to learn English and integrate into local parishes, claiming the Catholic Church in the UK was in danger of dividing along ethnic lines as the number of Polish-speaking churches rose.

Leading Polish community figures said they felt “violated” and “spiritually raped” by his words and called for talks on the issue.

New research, revealed last week by The Sunday Telegraph, shows that an influx of eastern Europeans boosts numbers attending Mass above those at Church of England Sunday services.

The research ended a momentous week which saw Tony Blair formally convert to Catholicism, while official figures to be released in the new year will show a rise in Mass attendance in 2006.

The number of churchgoers fell 40 per cent between 1963 and 1991, but the arrival of immigrants from Catholic countries in eastern Europe halted the decline and led to an increase in weekly Mass attendance from 917,500 in 2005 to 927,154 last year.

However, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said: “I’m quite concerned that the Poles are creating a separate church in Britain. I would want them to be part of the Catholic life of this country. “I would hope those responsible for the Polish church here, and the Poles themselves, will be aware that they should become a part of local parishes as soon as possible when they learn enough of the language.”(real all)

About the only thing that is not keeping me from being 100% enraged over what Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor is supposed to have said is the fact that this is written up in an British paper. The nation that has given us Ruth “Too-Dangerously-Incompetent-For-My-Job” Gledhill hasn’t enjoyed much positive press in the blogosphere in the unbiased religious journalism front.

But I have been around liberal-church-speak long enough to smell right through this really genteel garbage. I’d respect it more if he just said “Hey you dumb polacks, speak English and quit being so damned pious and overly devotional.” Insulting, sure, but why not be blut? Why mince words? If you are going to insult and alienate, don’t go half-dupa.

The pious Slavs who have filled English Churches to the point that Catholics outnumber the Church of England (not an amazing feat) in average Sunday attendance… They need and deserve this condescencion like a second dupek!

Am I the only one that finds it a supreme irony that someone - first name “Cormac” and last name(s) “Murphy” & O’Connor” is concearned about the ethnics in England? (What is that I hear feintly in the background?)

The Ratzinger Effect: more money, more pilgrims – and lots more Latin

Cardinal Sergio Sebastiani, head of economic affairs at the Holy See, said that the “remarkable increase” in both donations and numbers of pilgrims showed that there was “a symbiosis, a mutual sympathy between this Pope and Christian people everywhere”.

Presenting the Holy See’s annual budget yesterday, Cardinal Sebastiani noted that not only had it closed last year with a surplus of €2.4 million, partly thanks to diocesan donations, there had also been a “huge jump” in “Peter’s Pence”, the annual church collections given directly tothe Pope to use for charity, from $60 million (£30 million) in 2005 to $102 million. “The days when people talked of papal bankruptcy are past,” said Marco Tosatti, Vatican correspondent of La Stampa.

John Paul, who is on the road to sainthood, continues to be an attraction: with up to 35,000 pilgrims filing past his tomb in the crypt of St Peter’s every day, the Vatican is considering moving the tomb into the Basilica.

Record numbers attend Benedict’s weekly audiences, and seven million people a year now visit St Peter’s, a rise of 20 per cent. Similar increases are recorded for pilgrimages to Catholic shrines at Assisi, Lourdes, Fatima in Portugal and Madonna di Guadalupe in Mexico. “This is a Ratzinger phenomenon,” reported La Repubblica. Read All…

H/T: A Conservative Blog For Peace

A great deal of the new-media writers I like today touch upon, from time to time, issues of faith and class, working class people, those in poverty, and evangelism. I found the story linked below to be provocative and interesting. H/T: A Conservative Blog For Peace

• Have we made our best efforts to be truly open to every soul?
• Have our charitable efforts been accompanied by efforts of true evangelism? We have food pantries. Those that benefit are grateful. They know we give. Do they know why we give?
• What is our outreach to the middle class?
• Have we sought to really understand Christ’s vision of an all encompassing mission to everyone? Rejecting “conservative” class consciousness or “liberal” class obsession? Each soul counting?

I sure hope so.

HIM: Hey Merry Christmas a day or four late! Thinking about trying Sonic out, wanna go?
ME: Waiting for roomie to get home… I was going to go to Mass & confession at (Parish X) - u are welcome to join me if you like
HIM: what time is mass?
ME: 5
HIM: where is (Parish X)
ME: (Here)
HIM: That’s half a mile from Sonic…
ME: So that works then!
ME: Website says confession starts at 4pm, I wanna get there in time.
HIM: You wanna go to confession? Why?
HIM: how often do you go?
ME: once a week
ME: I started going weekly about 6 months ago, I feel better doing it.
HIM: dang you go once a week to confession
ME: before Mass
HIM: and what do you confess?
ME: my sins
HIM: what sins?
ME: Go to seminary and get ordained, I will tell you all about them.
ME: so far I have worked my way up and down the Ten Commandments, revisiting some favorites regularly
HIM: if you go to mass you confess there too, just silently
ME: that isn’t what the Catholic Church teaches - I am trying to go by the teachings
HIM: no when they say confess all your sins in silent
HIM: i just do that, y embarrass yourself?
ME: That is not sacramental confession, (Bob), no absolution is provided
HIM: I believe it is
ME: ask a priest or consult a catechism or website
HIM: nah. I think I am just going go to Sonic
HIM: and get something to eat
HIM: so chat with you later
ME: ok

“The confessional was empty”

True confession? I didn’t go to confession for over half a decade. I was too busy acting like a heathen. Trying to be less of a heathen, I try to go more. Simple sinners are as simple sinners do. We need it, pray for us.

I am without wheels of my own right now - long story… so I share a vehicle with a roomate… A vehicle he bought from me. I pay the insurance, I get to use it when he is at work.

Today he gets off work and gets home at 4:08. I am wanting to go to confession accross town to a great priest, but to not take up too much time (the roommate needs to go grocery shopping), I opt to go to the parish six blocks down. The website says confessions are heard at 4pm. This should work.

I get there at 4:18 - the kindly lady passing out missals informs me Father was done 5 minutes ago. “You have to get here right at four, he’s there about 15 minutes.”

In a suburban parish with three Masses and a parking lot 25% full at 4:20 for the 5pm Mass, confessions can be heard in thirteen minutes??? Maybe that is the parish I need to attend. They are so holy, apparently there isn’t much to confess… What little there is, takes one priest 13 minutes a week.

No problem, Saint Robert’s (named changed to protect the innocent) has confession half an hour before Mass - Mass is at 5pm. I can get there by 4:35 - I am good. I get there, I stand in line for 5 minutes only to find out, there is no priest in the confessional. There is no notice on the door. I hope Father is ok.

MAYBE I can make it to the Dominican parish. They hear it daily at noon until the last one is heard (a line for two confessors) and 1 hour before each Mass. Mass is at 5. I get there are 5:10, he is just leaving.

Go Dominicans. I should have come to you first.

Priests who read this blog (probably just Father J) is it that tough to sit and read a book for 30 minutes while waiting for a poor penitent? If you want, take a book while you are waiting for the prodigal sons. I am enjoying (then Cardinal) Ratzinger’s Without Roots if “People” is more your speed, that is fine. Bring your iPod™. If you are a smoker, go ahead and take an ash tray - it won’t bother me, I will be happy you are there.

Without the opportunities for confession there will be no saints. There will be no holy vocations to the priestly, religous and married life. To be a good priest, seminarian, sister, husband, wife, child, butcher, baker, candlestick maker, you need confession. Full stop.

Please be there. Give us 30 minutes.

Over in the blog English-Speaking Christianity in the com box of the entry “The Point of the English Reformation” The following was offered:

“I am always puzzled that Orthodoxy and Rome always seem to be judged by their defined dogmas and canons, not by their all too often rotten fruit (e.g., Orthodoxy has been a hotbed of “phyletism” — euphemism for racism — for several centuries now, both in the New and Old Worlds, and Rome has recently and finally been inescapably exposed as the largest sex-crime syndicate ever), but that Anglicanism is always judged by the views of one or more disloyal, internal movements and never by its own, equally-clear, constitutive formularies.”

What think ye, few but faithful followers?

1. Is Anglicanism always judged by the views of one or more disloyal, internal movements? (and…)
2. Never by its own, equally-clear, constitutive formularies?
3. Are those formularies equally clear?
4. By accident (or perhaps Providence?) the Catholic Church in the US has become the largest single body of faithful in the US. If the largest church has even the smallest percentage of those so much as even accused, (less than 1.8%, lower still if deacons - true clergy also - are included) does that make it the largest sex-crime syndicate ever?

With the new year just around the corner, I would like to encourage all Catholics to consider becoming better catechists –according to their specific responsibilities as pastors, parents, teachers, etc.– as one of the resolutions for the new year.

For Pope John Paul II’s aspotolic exhortation, click here: http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP2CATEC.HTM

An excellent day to pray to end abortion and read the psalms. Of course, what day isn’t?

And…
King David
Blessed Gerardo Cagnoli (Franciscan, 13th century)

Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War
Blessed Enrique Juan Requena
Blessed Juan Bautista Ferreres Boluda
Blessed José Perpina Nacher
Blessed Josè Aparicio Sanz

Martyrs from England
Saint Thomas Becket
Blessed William Howard Viscout of Stafford

Happy name day, Davids B & Z! You too Juan B!
Looking still for an image of Our Venerable Father Marcellus, Hegumen of the Akimetes!

Bene+dic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi: et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti, ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corporis, et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen

Bless, O Lord, this creature beer, that Thou hast been pleased to bring forth from the sweetness of the grain: that it might be a salutary remedy for the human race: and grant by the invocation of Thy holy name, that, whosoever drinks of it may obtain health of body and a sure safeguard for the soul. Through Christ our Lord. Amen

“Summorum Pontificum” allowed this to be used at any pub, bar, alehouse, inn, tavern or saloon. An indult may still be needed for clubs - based on the discretion of the bishop’s conference.

H/T: White Around the Collar

Hryhory Khomyshyn; Hryhory Khomysyn

Blessed Bishop Gregory (Hryhorii) was born March 25, 1865 in in November of 1893, he studied theology in Vienna, Austria. He was appointed rector of the Greek Catholic seminary in Lviv in 1902 he was consecrated bishop for the Eparchy of Stanislav in May of 1904, serving that see faithfully through WW1 and the Russian revolution.

He was arrested for his faith in 1939 by the NKVD and again in April 1945. He was deported to Kyiv where he died a martyr in prison on January 17, 1947, a few months short of his 80th birthday.