Simplicity

I worry about Lourdes. What if nothing happens, and N feels like it was a waste? What if my slowness ruins the fun for everyone else? What if I find it humiliating and resent them? I think this way, sometimes. But N hatched this plan because she loves me. G convinced me to do it and chose to come along because she loves me. I will redirect my worries into remembering those things, instead. Simplicity. Open my heart to receive your will for me at Lourdes. Please hear my heart's desire.

Change of Heart

 I fell in love with G. Not for the first time, and it's not the first time for that sort of thing, anyway. But prior to this, I had no attraction to marriage as a calling. Now it's something I think I want. 

Why? What's the point of this? Haven't there been enough callings I want that I can't have? Why do I need to go through this one too? I can't be a musician, a priest, or a monk. I'm a cripple. Now I need to fall in love with a woman I can't have in order to know how beautiful a holy marriage is? Isn't this some kind of sick joke? 

I followed my heart the last time something like this happened and the pain of it nearly drove me to despair. I have no serious intention of following my heart this time, so it will just be unrequited love. I've dealt with it before. Those feelings will subside soon enough once I start directing them. But now it's unrequited love plus desiring marriage, a desire I didn't when I was 17. Or 34. But it's not marriage in general. I don't want to get married. I want to marry her. 

Assuming these feelings are real and not just realizing how much I'm in love with her, this is very discouraging. I haven't accomplished anything in my life. I don't see a way forward, I just seem stuck, endlessly relying on others and not able to do anything myself at all. It's like I desire all good things but can't serve any of them. I don't know what to do with that. How can that glorify him? Isn't this meaningless? 

Temptation

Brother Jonas once told me that the bad spirit normally doesn't do anything remarkable, out of the ordinary. No pea soup, no vomiting, no screaming blasphemies (my dramatization). No, he just shows us something and says, "look." And that begins everything.

Sometimes it's all consuming - like a black pit that swallows you up, that entices you with every delightful possibility, promising perfect ecstasy, until it seems impossible, inhumane, that you would ever refuse. I have felt that at least once, in the sense that an impulse - a powerful, all but irresistible impulse - arose from within me but not from me. But that scares you. It scared me half to death. That can put you on full alert - "Something is not right," you realize, your blood runs cold, and you jump to the solution of penance. If you know, you can defend, and once you call upon the good spirit, the battle is all but won - for now.

More often, it's quiet, subtle, promising nothing but beauty if you just watch. Like seeing a diseased, worm-eaten corpse become healthy, beautiful, full-blooded, seductive, life-giving, exalting, domineering, promising. Will you feed it with attention? Or let it starve? If you feed it, see above. If not, it quiets down again to be a splinter in your mind, sometimes calling for attention, other times remaining still, broadcasting the signal of indefinite pleasure.

The second is by far more dangerous. It lulls you into complacency, pride, self-reliance. "I have fought against it and won many times, therefore it is not truly a threat. I can dismiss it, for it is nothing to me any more." Reasonable. Understandable. False. Because there is good, and there is evil, and those two powers are far, far greater than we are. In my experience, the powers of evil are far more effective than good, because the good spirit respects my freedom, and the bad spirit is always seeking to make me bind my freedom by any means necessary. I do not know the power of God by experience.

That is the struggle of the initiate. Sages say that this struggle ends in some sense once we experience enlightenment, but the only way to enlightenment (but is this even really true?) is through struggle. Or perhaps a better way of putting it: understanding, acceptance, peace, and letting the self be what it is.

I feel myself divided, in conflict, at war. Is that an illusion? Is the only reality perfect wholeness? Is the perception of the divided self proof of a profound lack of understanding? I would say I know only one thing, but faith is not knowledge. So I cling to only one thing and lament my ignorance: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. 

Seeking the Good

What I want is the truth. What I want is knowledge, not opinion: έπιστήμη, scientia. That which necessarily is, what cannot not-be. If it turns out that the good can be known only by faith, so be it; but I want to know that it can be known only by faith. Till then, I will hone my powers of  thought and relentlessly scrutinize any possibility.

Several candidates appear for the title 'good': existence, pleasure, that which we choose for the sake of itself, and flourishing; i.e., the development and exercise of a being's capabilities. That last definition is my own. I still like it, because I am overly fond of my own opinions, but a friend criticized it soundly on the following grounds: development of a being's capabilities reduces to the exercise of a being's capabilities; since everything a being does is an exercise of its capabilities, therefore no matter what it does it is accomplishing the good. Therefore the definition is worthless, in the sense that understanding the good should enable us to set an aim or purpose for our actions, or at least understanding our actions.

Second, existence. Aquinas makes a case for this when he equates the good with being (he also identifies it with the fullness of being. The two statements may or may not be equivalent). This seems to fail for most of the reasons above. If not, consider: every choice and every action is made by an existing being. They are made real, incarnate, by that being. Therefore insofar as they equally exist, they are all equally good, and no choice or way of life could be set above or apart from another as superior or degenerate, even when they completely contradict one another, as they often and manifestly do. 

Third, pleasure. This is almost the most attractive of all positions for me, not least because for a Christian (and I know hints of this by experience), true ecstasy is found in the contemplation of and being caught up in the triune life of God. It's also the hardest to refute, because my counterargument is simply this: people find pleasure in cruelty. Torturers, rapists, serial killers, Jane Austen protagonists. Or even on a more mundane level, the sorts of controlling, domineering people who enjoy flaunting their superiority or privilege. I know or have encountered plenty of such people. Lucretius bears witness to this type in general when he writes how sweet and pleasant it is to lie on the grass, watching while a ship wrecks itself on the coast, thinking to yourself how nice it is that you are spared such things. The very definition of Fridge Horror. 

Or a second counterargument, addiction: intoxication, food, and sex are all pleasurable; so why is what we call addiction to these things bad? 

To the second argument, I would say these ways of life are not genuinely pleasant. Consider gluttony and pornography. Before, mostly during, and after, there is nothing but pain: shame, guilt, self-disgust, self-loathing, seeking to forget, trying to numb, etc. I do not struggle with alcoholism or drug addiction, but I imagine similar patterns are operative. 

I regard the answer to the second counterargument  sufficient for me, but I don't regard it as demonstrative, because I don't see how it is yet (obviously if anyone does, please tell me). The first counterargument I have much more trouble with. The only possible ways out would be deny a rapist takes pleasure in rape (which seems absurd - granted, I don't struggle with rapacious tendencies myself, but the idea of a woman screaming and crying while I have my way seems anything but fun; on the other hand, rape seems to be most of all about domination and control, and those things certainly are very pleasant. Therefore etc.), or argue that such things are driven by compulsion, and that compulsion is not pleasant. Both of those seem to fail for manifestly obvious reasons. 

A way out might be Aristotle's definition: That which we choose for the sake of itself, and not for anything else. Sure, but what is that? Well, he's going to tell us: Happiness. Alright, but what is happiness? And so we return full circle. Because some will say wealth, honor, pleasure, contemplation, etc. Aristotle's own answer seems to be pleasure, understood as contemplation, the highest pleasure. 

Aristotle (and Plato, who seems to have a similar view) can hold this opinion because they were conversant in bodily, spirited, and intellectual forms of pleasure, and being deeply experienced in all three (they were all rich Athenian noblemen, and I can only imagine the parties they attended, not to mention enjoying wealth, honors, privilege, and staggering intellectual genius), chose philosophic contemplation as the most pleasant. 

That method - an ascent from the lowest, bestial sorts of pleasures to the highest, culminating, in the Christian view of being caught up in divine love and sharing in the love of others - might be a way forward, but I still don't have an objection that demonstrably rejects those lower pleasures as bad while holding pleasure as that which we choose for the sake of itself and not for the sake of anything else. 

And there I remain. 

Stuck. 

The Holy Eucharist III

Christ is the center of history and the cross is at the center of Christ. This is another way of saying that the Eucharistic Sacrifice is the primordial center of all things, for the Mass is that same consecration, breaking and immolation of His Passion, made manifest in all times and in all places. It was present in the Old Testament by means of shadows and figures; in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God, the Passover lambs slaughtered in Egypt foretold the reuniting of divine and human; Christ's death and resurrection accomplished that within history - i.e. time and space - and that sacrificial Act brought the Church into being, as blood and water flowed from the side of a dying god; symbolizing the union of divine and human (in a way, the Church, like Her Bridegroom, is a hypostatic union), it is in this way the Eucharist makes the Church. It literally brings Her into existence. 

Thus the Eucharist is primordial: it is in the beginning, it is the Covenant, it is nuptial, one-flesh union. It is the center of a Christian metaphysics, wherein the true is free because the true is covenant. It is both history, for we can point to a temporo-spatial point where it 'began', and it is mystery, for it transcends the very limits of the time and space that would seem to be its boundaries. It is an icon of divine revelation, but unlike an icon it is without limit. Now, in the age of the sacramental,  history and mystery become one, and they become one through the Eucharist.

More specifically, they become one through consecration: the hallowing, breaking, offering, and immolating of a pure and holy Victim; present also is the union of past, present, and future, for Christ as Antitype of the Old Law hearkens back to it, and His broken and immolated Body and Blood, offered to the Father in praise and thanksgiving, are really, truly, substantially, and sacramentally present under the appearance of bread and wine - vere, realiter, substantialiter, et sacramentaliter - in our present, which itself prefigures and foreshadows the Wedding Feast of the Lamb Who was slain at the consummation of all things. And all this occurs in consecration. By breaking the bread, Christ was offering Himself to be broken; the bread, consumed as food, is really His love and obedience to the Father. And because the Eucharist is now the ordering principle of reality, already accomplished but not yet complete, the same is true of us who celebrate the Eucharist, whether our Eucharistic role is clerical or lay. We, corporately (i.e. bodily) members of the Bride, share a transfiguring union with Christ our Head - what He is, fully human and truly divine, we also become, and this through the Eucharistic Sacrifice, which takes from us our false nature and restores us to His image and likeness.

History, mystery, past, present, future, Apocalypse - all unite and are one in a still, small voice, when a priest holds a small host and whispers, "This is My Body, broken for you."

The Holy Eucharist II

Like the Word of God, the Eucharist is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it is the prayer of prayers, the sacrifice of sacrifices, the highest action the Church can render; on the other hand, it is the very action that brings the Church into being, and so is prior to Her. The Church draws Her life and source from the Eucharist, for She was born from the side of Christ at His Paschal Sacrifice; as blood and water flowed from a dying god giving life to His people, so too divinity and humanity have been reconciled and reunited in Him. Thus He is the Head and His Body is one. By means of sacrifice, human will has once again adhered to the divine will - from the Garden of Eden-turned-death, to the Garden of Gethsemane-made-life, that drama is both the mystery of Christ's Body the Church, and Christ's Mystical Body sacrificed and made lifegiving food for us. 

All this is chiefly drawn from, mediated by, and seen through the Church's ancient tradition and manner of worship. In the ancient Roman anaphora, the mystery of faith, the mystery of the Church, and the mystery of the Eucharist are interwoven, mutually illuminating, and wholly ordered to the praise and glory of the Holy Trinity. The rite is structured, bearing the stamp of austere Roman law, but it is the structure of an ecstatic act of worship. The mystery of faith is the simple affirmation that Jesus of Nazareth died and rose again from the dead, and will come again; but it is transfigured in long paean of communion sacrifice, the anamnesis of the Roman Canon. 

This structure shows the identity and dignity of the Christian, for it reveals the will of God - Him loving us in eternity and in time. The first part of the Canon makes repeated reference to the sacrifice of praise, which refers both to the Act of Christ on the cross, making the Church to be, and the action of the priest, re-presenting that same sacrifice for the praise and glory of His Name, culminating in the sacred banquet, feeding on the Holy Eucharist Itself.

These two motion are constantly informing each other through the Canon, like two voices in polyphonic music, but there is a third voice - a transfigured mystery of faith. The first was the simple affirmation of the life and death of Christ; the second, a hymn to the Holy Trinity: "Per Ipsum..." The act of faith, through which the Body of Christ is professed and the Mystical Body of Christ worshiped, adored, and consumed, leads us to the interweaving, ever-holy life of the Holy Trinity - the life of perfect communion. From these three elements - faith, Church, Eucharist , each with their own structure and logic, we can see the movement of man from death in sin to life in God All-Holy, for the praise and glory of His name.

The Holy Eucharist I

Most properly, 'the Eucharist' refers to two realities: 1) the ritual representation of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary, the one eternal Act that brings the Church into being; 2) the Sacred Species, offered to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, and distributed to the faithful as the medicine of immortality. The Church confesses this to be the Flesh and Blood of Christ under the appearance of bread and wine. Put in contemporary terms, the Order of Mass is a ritual, sacrificial offering in an unbloody manner, and the Blessed Sacrament is the Sacrament of Sacraments. The Eucharist is a sacrifice for it is the very same sacrifice of the Cross, and it is a sacrament because it accomplishes what it signifies - the triumph of the Son of God over sin and death, and His Flesh and Blood, fruit of that sacrifice, nourishing His Bride the Church and leading Her to participate in divine life.

When created, man fell almost instantly into rebellion, twisting his will against the will of the Father. Man was profaned, and from the instant of the Fall recognized his fallenness and need to return to God. This was tried first on man's own initiative: sacrifice, a setting-apart, a making-holy, that God eventually hallowed and required from His People. From the beginning (Abel) it was a bloody sacrifice, slaughtering a helpless and therefore innocent animal, burning some of its flesh and consuming the rest. An intuition that through sacrifice, man could return to God.

At first carnal, physical, and unspiritual (e.g. the guardianship of the Mosaic Law), in the Psalms and Prophets arose the conviction that the true sacrifice to God was a humble and contrite heart - i.e. a sacrifice on the order of the spirit, which is to say the order of reality. God is spirit, so union and reunion with Him must be on the order of spirit, but man is also carnal, so that reunion must be carnal as well. This tension could not be resolved within the limits of the Old Covenant.

Only in the Word-made-Flesh does the solution appear. As fully, integrally man, Christ unifies His flesh, His mind, His will to God; and as truly God, He gives those united by faith to Him a share of His own divinity, so that each believer can renounce evil and Satan, being conformed to Christ through the renewal of the mind.

This was accomplished, fittingly, through sacrifice. Adam severed his will from God, and death was the result. Christ united His will to the Father as far as it was possible for a man to do - unto and through suffering and torturous death. Through this act, humanity is restored and made holy again before the Lord. 

The Sacrifice of Christ, as the antitype or fulfillment of the sacrifices of the Old Covenant, fittingly included a ritual meal - as seen at the Last Supper. Building on principles of hospitality, so important to the ancient world, a shared meal was the source and summit of human connection, human communion. But in the case of Christ, the communion is between man and God, so it was fitting that the means of the sacrifice - the Body and Blood of the Lord - should become the source of the communion meal, symbolized, figured by bread and wine, and being really, truly, substantially, and sacramentally present under those signs.

Thus the Eucharist is a sacrifice, the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. Not a different sacrifice, or a parallel sacrifice, or a new sacrifice, but the same act re-presented again for us; and the Eucharist is a sacrament, a mystery; for the power of God accomplishes through the words and actions of His bishops and priests what those words and actions signify - our redemption in Christ, culminating in Holy Communion with God and one another.

Nature. Grace. Integrity.

Our thirst for knowledge begins in the wonders of the natural world. But divine revelation is an unveiling, a piercing light into unhiddenness. In the beginning, the world ended. Nature turned against itself, a turn into corruption. A twisted spirituality, a warped intelligence, a rupture of disharmony defiled and shattered what was whole. Now, when we look at what we call nature - that which, seemingly of its own accord, happens for the most part - it cannot be seen in light of what it was. Our experience of the world is rooted in the world, and the world is fallen. Crashed. The Way reunites what was disparate, and being conformed in faith to the Word made flesh brings us back to divine life, takes from us our false nature, and restores to us our true image and likeness. The dark, narrow, and dangerous way of faith is a recovery of nature: harmony within our interior life, between man and woman, and even harmony with creation itself.

Because of where we begin, we cannot say what we were, for we are unable to transcend our origin. Space, time, matter, spirit - all these are part of the Fall. We cannot say they have been untainted by it, for all creation groans, and suffers the pains of childbirth. Once I was whole. Now I am broken. Our origin is obscure, hidden even to ourselves. The promise of faith and the experience of life illumined by the Resurrection of the New Covenant shows us what the divine life looks like - the conquest of our false nature, and the recovery of integrity - but even then it does not unveil our beginning, except through a glass darkly. Our experience is mediated by its fallen condition, so the only way to transcend that condition to experience the radically, utterly new. It is to taste the divine power, partake in the divine nature. Since God is love, love is that very teacher of the new experience. Love: a furious, molten, coursing spiritual passion, a consuming fire, the burning heat of which is the flourishing of others. It is an interior austerity that blossoms fecundity. It is a renunciation freeing us to possess what is truly real. The way of love leads to the cross, for we are baptized into His death, but the cross is the holiness of God encountering the power of darkness and death. The Resurrection is the fruit of that encounter. Death is written into the heart of nature, and through the Resurrection, death becomes undone. The life of love reveals that death is a lie and the power of the paschal mystery unveils its weakness.

Hannibal and Modern Architecture

There is something about modern architecture that draws me, almost irresistibly. In a way, I love it, but I love it against my better judgment. It's the sharp contrasts, the clear lines, the juxtaposition of things that shouldn't be - harsh, unfinished concrete next to dark, highly polished hardwood, black steel I-beams naked and exposed. Hannibal uses such architecture to unsettle and disorient, and the result is strangely entrancing, almost hypnotic, superbly pairing with its rich, luxurious photography. I hesitate to call it beautiful, but I cannot not call it desirable. It pulls at me and often I think it shouldn't. My friend H loves it, and though I feel I should voice disagreement, it's hard for me to do otherwise than agree.

Hannibal's office is particularly stunning. It is a whirlwind of contraries: comfort, austerity, safety, danger, sameness, contrast. It is a place where people are comfortable revealing the deepest, darkest, most intimate details of their inner life, but the room itself screams submerged violence. Looking at it makes me simultaneously comfortable and unsettled. It is an open floor plan, everything out and exposed, but it hides what it truly is; a lair of evil. Hannibal's kitchen, on the other hand, is simply what you'd expect; perfect and immaculately clean. It reveals nothing, unlike his office, which is where his real work is done. 

Will Graham's lecture hall at Quantico is different. The atmosphere there is harsher, unforgiving, but oddly reassuring, the way a bunker promises to protect you from danger. Google tells me the style is called 'neo-brutalist' or something like that, and I have no idea if there is actually a lecture hall at Quantico like that or if NBC just made it up (though in a way, it's better if they did; an artistic distortion of reality that reveals its inner nature, the way Eastern icons do with people). There is a tension in the air, rooted in the style of the room, that just wildly pulls at me. 

I'm not sure if that style is suitable for religious architecture or not, or if it could ever the equal of such sublimity as the Palatine Chapel, or the quiet, subdued beauties at St. Birinius on the Thames. But if someone could make something of it, it would be the Carthusians or the Cistercians.

Perhaps my love of modernist architecture is a disordered expression of my desire for monastic architecture. The Carthusian monastery in Vermont is very similar, in many ways, to that FBI lecture hall, using unfinished blocks of stone the size of Stonehenge's next to highly polished wood. The natural next to the unnatural, the comfortable next to the uncomfortable. The cells, on the other hand, having interiors made of wood exclusively, felt absolutely comfortable. Something about finished wood is reassuring in a room. Similarly, Cistercian architecture, while apparently simple, is extremely subtle and complex in the ways it deals with light, particularly the light of the sun. Contrast that with finely polished wood and you've got everything I love in Hannibal's architecture and none of the unsettling aspects. Stark, austere, and attractive.

Should architecture be simultaneously entrancing, even intoxicating, and unsettling, disorienting, at the same time? I don't know. It's the sort of feeling I get with modern art and atonal music (especially Scriabin's piano sonatas) as well. There is a sort of pleasure in understanding what is before my eyes, but it's not a pleasure I'm sure should be indulged, much less cultivated. 

Cultural Marxism and Identity Politics

Everyone today intuitively understands a key element of Marx because his core of class struggle has for some reason migrated in translation to every sector of public discourse and popular culture. It is not his views on money and the economy. No one is motivated to enter the streets protesting on behalf of the proletariat against the bourgeois - in part because the American proletariat is now the Chinese, Indian, or Mexican industrial worker, and because in a few decades those jobs will be automated anyway. Even the Occupy Wall Street movement did not protest the bourgeois, only the extremely wealthy; and that movement was so disparate it lost focus and soon fizzled out. Instead, the critical insight of Marx remains: there are those with power, those without, and the two sides are at war with each other. In Marx, this leads to the revolution of the proletariat; today, the 'proletariat' (feminist, Black Lives Matter activist, LGBTQ, etc.) pays lip service to legal equality, but seems to desire some modern analogue to the proletariat revolution.

Power and oppression are the only things that are real. There is no common ground, no possibility for reconciliation. Martin Luther King is dated and naive here. The rich oppress the poor, whites oppress blacks, men oppress women: because they are strong and the minorities are weak; the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must, and this is how resentment and revolution are born. This pattern of strong vs weak and the conflict this engender may be extrapolated to every set of human relations in political discourse: man and woman, white and black and brown, heterosexual and homosexual, religious and non-religious, and so on to infinity. Find any marginalized and marginalizing class, and you can replicate the pattern yourself. This explains the animus against the so-called white privilege, against the Catholic Church, the backlash against religious freedom cases, etc. All of them have in common a historically oppressing (or judged to have been such by today's standards) agent and a historically oppressed minority class.

Thus there are only two groups: the oppressed and the oppressor. In the United States, historically the oppressing class was white males (slavery was not banned till after the Civil War, women did not vote till the 20th century, etc); thus, one can and must resist the oppressing class; this is right and good. On the other hand, those of the oppressing class must make reparation, feel guilty for the actions of their fathers, and acknowledge their societally privileged status, which necessarily undercuts any argument they might make. Were they to systematically criticize an oppressed class (gay, black, women, etc) it would be opprobrious homophobia, sexism, racism, etc., but the reverse is not true. Blacks can hate whites, but it is not racist, because blacks are seen to be an oppressed class in this country. Similarly women can hate men, but it is not sexist because of patriarchy, or homosexuals et al can hate heterosexuals because heteronormativity is still dominant. When the oppressed is at a disadvantaged position of power (which seems to mean being a minority in terms of population), anything goes. It might be prejudiced, but not sexist, racist, etc. because the one class holds the social, political, and economic power while the other class does not. 

Similarly, since some classes (LGBTQ, for instance) are more oppressed than others, this affects the expressed opinions of these classes; the weight of a black man's opinion will be different than a Latino lesbian, which is different than a blind bisexual, etc. One's category is a victim class, and the value of one's opinion is determined by the value of one's identity, particularly as it has been historically oppressed or not. This forms a hierarchy or pyramid, which varies in detail but not in overall structure; whether minority races face more discrimination than women is a subject for debate, but that these classes have been oppressed by cisgendered white males is not. All such oppressed classes have this in common, that they face discrimination perpetrated by cisgendered white males, and this is what fuels disputes in popular political discourse.

If this be the case, the prospects for different groups subordinating themselves to and working for the common good together are dismal indeed. Instead, one's political opponents must be seen as personal enemies devoid of anything good or noble, such that if their group flourish, your own must decline, and vice versa. Thus what might seem to bind different groups under a common cause, like the traditional American ideals of personal liberty and responsibility as enshrined in the Declaration, is now used as a weapon against those with whom you disagree. The dominant strain of politics is not the recognition that what we hold in common is far more significant than what divides us, but a set of rival groups, each fighting the other for dominance, none of which will give ground or seek common cause.

Silence and Amoris Laetitia

Some say that for God it is sufficient that one accepts His will in one's heart and soul, even if one's actions do not correspond to this. In this manner they think themselves able to sin while maintaining the integrity of the principle of faith and fear of God. In this way, it is absolutely the same as if one attempted to maintain the principle of chastity while violating the holiness and integrity of the matrimonial bond.

~Tertullian, De Poenitentia, 5.10

A Glimpse into the If of Faerie While Watching Beauty and the Beast

Faerie tales give the promise of happiness If. If you return by midnight, you may have the appearance of nobility and be with your beloved; if you do not trespass into the West Wing, the castle is yours; if you do not eat from this tree, you may live in paradise; if you do not do something - something that is never unreasonable, something always arbitrary, something it is rarely clear you should not do - then you can live happily ever after. 

That if sours the promise of happiness. It corrupts even the memory of the offer; hearing the condition leaves a bad taste in your mouth that lingers on even in your recollection. It is not worth it, I think, to have even surpassing happiness on condition that… The forbidden thing becomes tantalizing, intoxicating, that which itself promises fulfillment, not the already-offered. The library is nothing; the West Wing, everything. The forbidden fruit becomes the sweetest for me, for at its heart is the I, the self; it is a pure choice, for there is no admixture of another; it is simply Me, my choice, the path of my own desire. If there is a reservation - a time, a room, a tree - are we really being offered everything? Can it really be a happy ending without everything?

Since the forbidden is so attractive, we must ask, “Why? Why is the forbidden forbidden?" “Because”? Merely because the Lawgiver, the Lawyer says it is? Because Rules must be followed? Is that why we are here, why we live, so that we can follow rules? Are we to be no different than trained monkeys or well-oiled machines? Why is obedience so important? Why does it matter that much? 

Legal language, the language of contracts, of assurances, of bargains, immediately makes me suspicious. It causes distance, difference, and division; it raises dry, sterile formalities. A well-written contract is easily digestible and therefore not what the soul longs for. It is contrary to the erotic spirit, the soul of yearning, seeking, pursuing, and delight. Cool, mechanical detachment is its mode. It is not the tool of friends, for friends among friends do not need contracts. Rather, simple friendship is sufficient, else it is not really friendship; even as a marriage dependent upon legal guarantees is scarcely a marriage. Why then should happiness, the reason for our existence, the aim of our lives, be different than what man prizes most in this world: intimate friendships and a lifelong beloved? Contracts are useful, they are even necessary; but the merely necessary is contemptible, forgettable; it is the useless, the “for its own sake”, that is noble, that must be pursued if we are to live genuinely human lives. Man may not be able to live without contracts, while he can live - or rather exist - friendless, alone, and without seeking wisdom, but who would not rather be wronged by an unjust law while he had close friends and a wife who loved him? To thus require a contract as a condition for ultimate fulfillment, a life that’s happy, seems to contradict our nature, or at least raise serious questions about our nature’s purpose: whether we should seek wisdom or obedience first. 

The contract arouses suspicion: because friends and lovers do not need them, I sometimes think the contractor is keeping something back from me; the thing which will turn out to matter most. Is he actually interested in my own good if he is saying “if”? Am I actually being wronged, even cheated? Am I missing out? If I cannot see a necessary reason for the prohibition, does it make much sense to follow it? 

The “If” invokes control and trust; a challenge to the radical trust which leads to an obedience; an obedience which ushers in an entirely new relationship; a relationship which I hope transcends the intimacy of a marriage but which, at the time, cannot from the outside be clearly and necessarily distinguished from slavery. When a faerie tale says “If” it is a test; a test which requires we become naked and vulnerable, exposed to every danger; without safeguards or guarantees we will not be deceived, ruined, and played for fools. Equality does not exist here, for obedience and equality do not mix. Our closest analogies help make the matter clear, but they terrify instead of reassure, for they invoke Master and Slave, or more viscerally, Hunter and Prey - hardly a triumph of rhetoric even in a hierarchical society, to say nothing about its resonance in a fiercely democratic people. 

Accepting that condition means placing your whole self into the hands of another, and not even letting yourself think the second-guessing “But…”.  It means relinquishing all claim on being the center towards which all things tend; not only in the cosmos (simple enough in a sophisticated, scientific age), but even (especially) in your own life as well. It means ceding absolute control absolutely, the very act a wandering carpenter once called true purity of heart.

That is why every faerie tale ever told recollects the condition’s transgression, for it is unthinkable, or almost unthinkable, that someone would stake something as important as a life that’s happy on something so absurd and unnatural as an if, trusting that the ensuing relationship would leave friendship, marriage, even wisdom-seeking, far behind. Nothing less than the fulfillment of all desire is at stake. The if is the Question, and the Answer is either “Yes” or “No.” There is no third. 

Contra Caritas

The inclusive love for a man for all mankind - selfless, I imagine would be the word - is not truly love as love in an exclusionary act - a claim, if you will. Subject and object are lost, and the act itself negates both, for the particular is lost in favor of the universal. 

On the Second Vatican Council V (Lumen Gentium II)

Salvation is both individual and communal; on the one hand, the Holy Trinity dwells within me; the Holy Spirit dwells within me; Christ our God died for me; on the other hand, precisely as saved we are made into a new people, a unified people. As an image of this reality, the Holy Trinity chose the People of Israel; with them God made a Covenant, for them He gave the Law, all for the sake of preparing man for the Holy Incarnation of the Anointed One; in preparation for the New Covenant, the final covenant, which will last until the Lord returns in power. As the Old Covenant created a people, so the New Covenant creates a New People. 

The Head of this new people is Christ - He is its Founder, but unlike Lycourgos and Solon, He transcends mere political foundings - these are but images, albeit natural images, for our longing to be the People of God. Next to Him these founders are almost irrelevant. As our heritage He gives us the freedom and dignity of the Sons of God. Our commands, our Law, is the Gospel. Christ is the New Moses, the form of all political foundings.

Lumen Gentium calls this new people a 'messianic people' - the People of the Anointed One. It does not include all men (yet), and often looks like a small, insignificant, contemptible flock of filthy sheep, but it is truly the unity, hope, and salvation for the whole human race. It is His instrument for the salvation of all; it is the Light of the World and the Salt of the Earth. Like ancient Israel, it is called a Church or Assembly (cf II Esd. 13.1, Num. 20.4, Dt. 23.1), and as Israel wandered in exile, the Church has here on earth no lasting city, and longs for Her Promised Land, which will be revealed only after the Apocalypse.

This second chapter concerns the entire People of God, from the highest of the Patriarchs to the lowliest of the peasants. All the baptized (a precise, ritual definition, one which instantly and intimately recalls the Mysteries of Christ our God, and the Church as Mystery) are a spiritual temple and a holy priesthood, a priesthood in which all offer spiritual sacrifices and proclaim the redeeming power of our God. 

Such a definition introduces us to the distinction between the hierarchical and baptismal priesthood. Both are intimately interrelated and yet essentially different. Each is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ, Who is the Form of both, since both are ways of Caritas - self-giving, self-emptying love. For now, the Council will address what they have in common; it will examine both separately later.

The holy nature and living structure of the priestly people is awakened into growth through the Seven Holy Mysteries and exercise of the virtues, both human and divine. One becomes fully a priest in this way by means of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Communion. Penance, Matrimony, and Holy Orders are also mentioned (the last only just), emphasizing that all are called to perfect holiness, as God our Father is holy. 

The People of God participate not only in the Priestly Office of Christ, but in His Prophetic Office as well. We share in His prophetic mission very simply: by spreading a living witness of faith, hope, and love. Again, it is shown by our sensus fidelium, our instinct for the faith, an instinct common to both the hierarchy and the laity, an instinct nourished by the Spirit of Truth and the Word of God. The charismatic gifts, signs of the Spirit's presence, are also expressions of the prophetic office.

Finally, the People of God are related to Christ as King. All men are called to become a part of the New People of God. Man was created in unity; after the Fall, he scattered into families, tribes, and nations, devolving again and again into fratricidal war; but it was God's will that we be brought again to unity through Christ Jesus the Lord, Who is the Source of our coming-together and the Cause of our faith. 

Clearly then (cf. LG 8), there is only one People of God; and this People is of course the Catholic Church, the One People taken from every tribe and nation; from all of these we who were many are now made one, citizens of the Heavenly Kingdom. Thus it is that the Church, as Kingdom of Christ, ennobles, purifies, and strengthens the good elements of each culture She encounters (though other foul customs She abolishes). Such a tradition contributes to Her unity, but Her unity is not a sterile, mechanical uniformity, but harmony; man complements woman; layman complements the priest; the priest complements the monk. What results is not discord, but (provided that each does his work according to and for the sake of love) a richer, fuller harmony: unity in faith, unity in hope, unity in love. For this reason we can all profess the same faith, be in communion with the same Church, and yet live in different local Churches and accomplish different task; serving the poor does not take away from defending the unborn; devotion to the Most Holy Liturgy does negate our zeal for the oppressed, for we are one.

After examining the People of God qua priest, prophet, and King, the Council turns to the question of communion with the Church, and who has it. Similar questions are raised in Nostra Aetate and Unitatis Redintegratio. The Council answers this question in terms of descending order; those who experience the most or fullness of communion with those who experience it the least. Are there persons who experience absolutely no communion with Her? We shall see.

This examination begins with a traditional affirmation: the Church is necessary for salvation (extra Ecclesiam nullus salus est); outside the Church there is no salvation, or phrased positively, all salvation is inside/through the Church. In our egalitarian, equality-obsessed age, little arouses more wrath and accusations of intolerance - and perhaps rightly so, for does that not seem to imply that external membership in the Church suffices for salvation, and lacking this necessarily leads to damnation? It does not. Blessed Augustine, our father among the Saints, would lament concerning the Church, "How many sheep without! And how many wolves within!" This same Saint taught us both hope and the trembling of fear when he said, "Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved; but do not presume, for one of the thieves was damned." In our ancient Tradition (of which holy Augustine is but one example), external membership does not suffice for salvation. The Council emphasizes the same, teaching that we must persevere and be alive in love; our heart and our work must be right; take hold of this, and not let go of the other. 

The Council turns to something very weird immediately after the repeated traditional teaching: "whoever then, knowing the Church was made necessary for salvation by Christ Jesus, would refuse to enter or remain in Her, could not be saved." What on earth can this mean? How could someone believe that the Church was necessary for salvation and not enter and or remain in Her? It seems as if the number of men to which this text is zero; it seems to describe a psychological impossibility, for it is hard to imagine anyone abandoning the Church for any other Christian denomination while believing they would be damned for doing so. All the more so for total apostasy (for in that case, one would a) cease to believe in damnation at all; or b) believe salvation could be found within another religion)! One would become Orthodox, for example, because one believed the Orthodox Church, not the Catholic Church, enfleshed the truth; in this case, one asserts that the Catholic Church's teachings are wrong. I have no answer to this objection, and I cannot say why Lumen Gentium includes such a phrase. 

Lumen Gentium continues with an answer to the question of who experiences full communion, and that is (unsurprisingly) exclusively Catholic Christians, believing and practicing all that She believes and teaches; who are moreover persevering in love. 

Next, the Council acknowledges the links between the Church and those Christians not preserving the entirety of the Faith and not in communion with the Successor of Peter. Protestants (at least those who acknowledge Baptism) seem to be alluded to first, then the Eastern Orthodox. To foster reunion, the Council urges the perpetual path of penance taught in §8, "that the signs of Christ may shine more brightly over the face of the Church." 

Finally, the relation between non-Christians and the Church is discussed. First mentioned are the Jews, who because of Abraham their father, are treasured in the eyes of God; though what this means has since the Council been thought, "The Law of Moses suffices (at least for the Jews) unto salvation, which is blasphemy. It would also mean there is no mission to the Jews, which is plainly contrary to Scripture (Galatians, Roman, Ephesians, and Hebrews, which treat also of the insufficiency of the Old Law qua salvation) and the lived witness of Holy Tradition. This view is an abomination. 

Second are mentioned the Muslims, "Professing to hold the faith of Abraham" - which does not mean they actually do. Does it mean they worship the one true God? The text "along with us" certainly seems to imply that, but if God is beyond good and evil - i.e. His holy will determines good and evil - then Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God, even though their understandings of natural theology would be very close, even identical in some ways. Both religions being monotheistic does not require both to revere the same Holy One. If the view is different enough, one is justified in saying this (cf. II Cor. 11.4). This probably requires its own space, so no more attention will be given here, save: the Church in this Council is concerned with reconciliation (rightly so) and peace between all (a laudable goal); thus in characterizing those outside Her bounds, She prefers to describe them in the most positive terms possible. But these pastoral statements must be read in light of and in continuity of what came before, so looking to what other statements on Islam have been in the past might be helpful.

Third, even polytheists/pagans/idolaters are called to faith, as are those who believe nothing divine revelation; the Council mentions the invincibly ignorant, which applies, in various degrees, to all non-Catholics. Their salvation is not intrinsically impossible, even if they die outside the visible boundaries of Holy Mother Church. All have some form of communion with the Church, then, if only being part of the call to love and know Her as Mother and Christ as Lord – She is cut off from absolutely none.

Lest this result in the apathy of the missionary spirit (which it seems to have done since the '60s), the Church gives us a reality check: Even though salvation is possible by ways outside the visible Church, ways known to God alone, "Very often," men are deceived by the Liar, persuaded to worship a creature rather than the Creator; or being overwhelmed by the misery in the world and dying in despair. Presuming on the first half of §16 is a colossal error, the Council seems to be saying. It is possible for a man to cross a desert lacking food and water, but presuming on that possibility is stupid when planning a journey. 

Contra that foolish view, Christ is the sure Source of salvation, Who rescues us from our "slavery to error" (cf. those mentioned in the first half of §16). Hence the Church is the herald of the Good News, and She purifies the good encountered in the various peoples She meets when She proclaims the Risen Christ to them - to the bewildered confusion of the Foul Serpent and the glory of the Holy One. Therefore, the Church both prays and labors that the whole world become joined to the One People of God (cf. §§8, 13), our Holy Mother the Catholic Church.

On the Second Vatican Council IV (Lumen Gentium I)

Lumen Gentium has eight chapters (these titles are my own, because Vaticanspeak is sometimes less than clear, but they are all at least derived from the official chapter headings):

• Introduction to the Church (sections 1-8)
• The People of God, considering all the faithful in common (ss. 9-17)
• The Hierarchy, with an emphasis on the Episcopate (ss. 18-29)
• The Laity (ss. 30-38)
• The Call to Holiness (ss. 39-42)
• The Religious (ss. 43-47)
• The Church and the Apocalypse (ss. 48-52)
• The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Glorious, the All-Holy One (ss. 53-69)

Chapter I begins by naming the Church a Mystery, deliberately choosing language evoking the Divine Mysteries, of which there are seven (in Latin, sacramentum); intended also is the analogous understanding of the Church as sacrament - if only qua being sign and instrument - as stated later on. 

The motive behind Lumen Gentium is totally missionary: to draw all men (no qualification is given here) to full union in Christ, a task the Council calls "urgent," possibly because, as hinted further on, a false unity might be sought within technological and cultural bonds alone. In 1964, Christianity was already collapsing in Western Europe, a collapse almost total today; for modern man, God is indeed dead. The technological and cultural bonds, then, would seem to be post-Christian bonds: "Act with consent" and "Live as you please", titillated and distracted by a pervasive technological progress, which itself fosters the growth of this soft nihilism in a way unimaginable to the Council Fathers - just think of the Internet, and how it has altered the nature and force of public opinion. There is a certain unity to be found here, it is true, but it is the unity of Babel, founded on the universal language of mathematical physics, our new common tongue. And as Genesis intimates, Babel is destructive of humanity, and thus much more so of revelation. It might not be an overly dramatic exaggeration to say that this new Babel is the competition of the Antichrist, that the Council was convened to show us the way out. 

That solution is startlingly simple: Draw men into the mystery of the Church; mystagogical initiation, mystical catechesis. The solution to the Antichrist's Babel is a retrieval of the Holy. We do not present a better version of the secular unity, we show men the Sacred, the mysterium tremendum, in thought, word, and deed. That is why we emphasize today, following the Council, the Church as Mystery (mysterium) over the earlier formulation of Perfect Society (societatem perfectum), even though the latter is true, necessary, and perfectly clear; mysterium cuts right across the worldliness' withered heath and undercuts it, indicating that the solution the Church gives to the problem of human division and/or conflict is radically different from any secular project, any secular endeavor. Her unity stems from Her mysterium, not technological progress.

She is a mystery of intimate union with God; She is the sign and the instrument of this union; She is an image of it and through Her it is accomplished. Her origin is the ad extra work of the Holy Trinity, and Her mystery is ordered and orders toward that ineffable, inexhaustible wonder of intimate communion. Through Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body, we return to communion with the Blessed Trinity. It is through the Church, then, that we have the means to share in the life of the Trinity, and become partakers in the Divine Nature Itself.

The Trinity created the Church, but various aspects are ascribed to the Three Persons, probably because of fittingness and tradition. Naturally we begin with the Father, Who, when He created the heavens and the earth, forming man in the Divine Image, He beheld the incipient Church. One might say the whole heaven, all the earth, was created for the sake of the Church. Further, Christ our God inaugurates the Kingdom of God - the Church - when He walked amongst us. He is Her Origin, Her Head, Her Guide, and Her End. Finally, the Holy Ghost dwells within the Church (and within the souls of each individual member of the Church) as in a temple; He is the witness that we are adopted sons; as adopted sons, we are granted an adoptive yet transformative share in divinity - yet another image of our participation in the Divine Nature. Thus the Holy Ghost is the soul of the Church. 

Thus by naming the Church Mysterium, the Council intends us to understand that She is the fruit of the Blessed Trinity, a shadowy image of Its union, and the means by which we participate in Divinity Itself.

Since the Church is a mystery, She cannot be exhaustively, precisely defined. Though Her nature can be hinted at, indicated, intuited, and illustrated by analogy, it can never be perfectly grasped - much like how Otto explains the idea of the Holy. So we might say, "She is like this x and not like this y. Can you not see for yourself now what She is?" Nevertheless, Her aspects can still be articulated, at least so far as our intent is to deepen our love of the mystery, not replace it with a sterile formula. The Council names three ways Her mystery is shown: the fulfillment of the divine oracles, the preaching of Christ our God, and in the Divine Person of Christ Himself. The last way seems most of all to warrant further explanation. How does the Person of Jesus manifest the mystery of the Church?

Perhaps because as God-Man, His Nature is the form, the look of the Church; one Person, two natures. If that be the case, the mystery of the Church would at least be analogous to the mystery of the Incarnate Word, the mystery of the Incarnation. Or perhaps because the Person of Christ, especially in the Holy Triduum, is perpetuated down through the centuries by the suffering Church Militant; the Passion of Christ continues in Her suffering children. Again, perhaps it is because the power "to draw all men to Myself when I am lifted up" has been granted by God Himself to the Church. There would seem to be, then, the closest connection between "crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus" and "resurrexit tertia die;" and likewise between these things and Holy Mother Church. The hidden power of the Incarnation, the strength in apparent weakness; caritas, humility, and self-sacrifice; slow, hidden growth - such are absolutely Hers. 

Similarly, other titles describe, but do not totally comprise or define, various aspects of Holy Mother Church: Sheepfold, Flock, Field of God, Choice Vineyard, Temple of God, House of God, Dwelling-Place of the Most High, Mother. All of these are drawn from Sacred Scripture, and the Council does little more than list them. One of these, Mystical Body of Christ, it develops at length - again, primarily using the images given in Sacred Scripture. 

The Word used humanity as the instrument to accomplish salvation; His humanity was the means through which Divinity acted to redeem fallen man. Redemption involves reception of the Holy Spirit, Who unites us into one Body. The Sacred Mysteries are particularly important here, since they are powerful, efficacious images of the Triduum - the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ our God. He is our Model, meaning that especially through our trials and tribulations, we travel the path of His Passion; we perpetuate it ("fill up what is lacking") through history. We suffer with Him, and if we persevere we shall like Him be glorified.

In order to safeguard us on this Way of the Cross, the Holy Spirit, Who purifies the Church, is given to Her, and He grants Her the great charisms which declare the glory of God; not, however, as autonomous tools of the given, but as under the authority of the Apostles and their successors, that harmony be preserved and discord avoided. Again, the Holy Spirit is given that the Church may always be renewed, and always be a dynamic, powerful force, not a stagnant, ossified structure. Thus again (and yet again!) the Holy Spirit is the soul of Holy Mother Church, the source of our spiritual life, and how we participate in Divinity Itself.

The end of the chapter explains the relationship between the Mystical Body of Christ and the visible Church on earth. It is through the Church that Christ our God communicates His grace and love. This topic is explosive - in speaking of this, one is necessarily walking in a minefield. The Council thus takes care to avoid several errors - the "hierarchical society" (note the precise, unmysterious language here!) and the Mystical Body (a Mystery of the first order) are not two separate realities; rather, the apparently banal is united to the invisible, intelligible Mystery; similarly, the Church Militant is not separated from the Church Triumphant; no, there is only one Church, and She contains a divine and a human element, analogous (as Leo XIII teaches in Satis Cognitum) to the Mystery of the Incarnation. Christ our God's assumed humanity is an instrument similar to how the communal structure of the Church serves the lifegiving, salvific Spirit. Divinity saves - the Church, by the ineffable will of the Holy One, is but the means. 

The Mystical Body of Christ - also called by the general term 'Church of Christ' - is said to "subsist in" the Catholic Church. This is the link between the Church as Mystery and the Church as historical reality. But why the word 'subsistit' instead of 'est'? What does 'subsist' mean?

'Subsist' seems to be a term used in philosophy. Aquinas uses it to refer to the existence of substances; it is predicated of substances, independent things, οὐσίαι. Only substances subsist, whereas an attribute 'is'. 'Actuality' might be a decent synonym - in Greek, ἐντελέχεια. 'The Church has actuality in the Catholic Church', perhaps. Thus 'subsist' is more precise than 'est,' and moreover, as clarified by the CDF, can be predicated of the Catholic Church alone. 

On the other hand, it seems (as far as I can tell from the secondary reading I've done) as if this word was chosen to indicate that there are elements of the Church in separated Churches and churchlike communities. But if so, this is an unnecessary reason, since that very thing is explicitly stated in the next sentence. It would seem better, qua clarity at least, to use a different structure in s.8: a) this Church of Christ is the Catholic Church; b) moreover, this identification is that between a substance and its existence; it exists in Her in the way of substances, not in the way of attributes or accidentals - hence the word 'subsist'. c) This being so, it is still the case that elements of salvation and sanctification may be found outside Her visible structure. 

It is not as if the identification of the Mystical Body of Christ and the Catholic Church is lacking in Lumen Gentium, but one needs to read all the sections (1-8) in light of each other - when read closely, the beginning as illuminated by the end, the proper interpretation is not difficult. But it presupposes proper instruction in the earlier pronouncements, which tended more towards the dogmatic than to the pastoral. One must already be steeped in Tradition to profit from Lumen Gentium (and I shall guess that this will be evident in the other documents as well); lacking this, one is apt to err, the more so as one is influenced by the spirit of the world instead of Holy Tradition. Therefore the Council documents of themselves might not be sufficient for instruction - they require supplement from the definitions provided by Tradition.

It should be remembered, though, that this is probably true of most pastoral writing, not merely the Council documents. In defining dogma and writing theological instruction, the hierarchy of truths is seen as a whole, a pulsating harmony; in pastoral writing, however, one or another aspect is emphasized as the situation dictates. A one way street emerges - only from precisely defined dogma can one embark on the pastoral task; not the other way around. Saying that pastoral writings are inherently misleading is quite wide of the mark, but if read as if they were dogma, instead of correcting some deficiency or other, they will inevitably be misinterpreted.

The identification of the Catholic Church with the Mystical Body of Christ also links Her to Christ; He is Her Model and Master; therefore She imitates Him by definitively renouncing temporal glory. Instead, She must communicate the Truth Himself amidst trial, suffering, and persecution; humility and self-sacrifice must be Her identity, for these things were His identity. Only this way of life enables Her to see Christ in the poor and the oppressed, and only this will remind Her that to serve them is to serve Her Lord.

The introduction closes with the need for purification looking forward to the end of the world. While Christ knew no sin, the Church, though holy and purifying sinners through Him, stands in need of being ever renewed. Thus She must pursue a path of perpetual penance and purification, returning again and again to the Sacred Scriptures, the Fathers, and the witness of the Saints. Only this way will give Her members the divine wisdom to respond to the pastoral problems, dilemmas, and questions which arise in Her particular time and place, for She will be able to answer from the perspective of divine revelation, not influenced by public opinion. This definitively establishes Her as a stranger in a strange land, an exiled vagrant, having here on earth no lasting city. She is an image of the Suffering Christ: amidst the oppression of Evil, She proclaims only one message - the Triumph of the Cross. Like Him, Holy Mother Church suffers from within and without, and often (even necessarily, perhaps?) Her most grievous wounds are inflicted by Her own children. Even then, She reveals the Mystery of the Lord faithfully; but in a shadowed, hidden way, until the Apocalypse.

Method and Spirit for Studying the Code of Canon Law

After the initial excitement wore off, I began to fear I would hate canon law. For one who adores the powerful, polyphonic harmonies of the Gregorian Rite and the endless ritual precision it requires, not to mention the pulsing, silent Roman discipline, I surprised myself. My suspicion was similar to my misgivings concerning civil lawyers and the practice of moral theologians I have experienced; civil lawyers use the law to serve injustice, moral theologians (so it often seems) say that sin is no sin, and I feared that canon lawyers would use the Code to serve sin, not the good of souls. 

I still have my misgivings, but they have lessened and may lessen further. That some canon lawyers do treat the law this way does not mean canon law itself must inherently tend towards encouraging sin (duh). Even I can recognize that. At any rate, I resolved (obviously) that I would not use it that way. Further, in writing canon law briefs, I must admit that the requirement - explain what the law says to this case - can be, and usually is, quite delightful, because it encourages one of my burgeoning talents: to discuss something dispassionately and seek the truth alone. Omit unnecessary words, as Strunk would say. Be concise, even elliptical - but crystal clear. I admit: I like that. I like it a lot. Simplicity and clarity is what I strive for in all writing, and it never seems to be as effortless as when I am writing a canon law brief.

Still, I am a man, not a machine (would a robot be the best canon lawyer of all? Or would human talents like imagination still be necessary to render a good judgment?), so I must have a motivation, which cannot be the intent to make evil seem licit. Obviously the solution is simple (and obviously it took me until last fortnight to see it): pastoral zeal is the motivation; the good of souls, which is salvation. Happily, I discovered that the very last canon in the Code (canon 1752, if you're interested) states this plainly: Prae oculis habita salute animarum, quae in Ecclesia suprema semper lex esse debet. The salvation of souls is the supreme law of the Church; it is the form of canon law, it is its soul. So in all of my judgments, practiced in class and then (God willing) in the midst of and for the Mystical Body of Christ, I will be in service to this beautiful principle. This reinforces one of my most powerful longings - service to a beautiful cause that is greater than me - so I am satisfied. Bonum est!

Everything becomes more and more simple. Obedience. Simplicity. Trust. Sacrifice. All for the Beautiful.

On the Second Vatican Council III

A lot has changed in the two years plus since I last wrote on the Council. A lot of my thinking on it has changed, and the situation of the Church in the world (particularly in the United States) is quite a bit different than it was almost three summers ago. Still, I need to absorb the teachings of the Council, and I think this project is a worthwhile way to do it. So I will continue, but my method will change, at least in the beginning. Instead of moving chronologically into Sacrosanctum Concilium, I am leaving that to the end. I have a lot to say on it, a lot to say about the Liturgical Movement and what liturgical reform truly mean, but now is not the time. So I am moving into Lumen Gentium, and from there to Gaudium et Spes. After that I am unsure whether to continue through Nostra Aetate and Dignitatis Humanae, or go back to the First Session and examine Inter Mirifica. I lean towards the latter, for Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes will probably give me enough of the Council's intent to make the lesser, more obscure decrees intelligible - not to mention that these two documents are among the most powerful the Council promulgated. 

This project has made my overall intellectual path become increasingly clear recently. Questions of what the Council meant, mean and ought to mean became questions of what sort of man I want to become, and now I have an answer. I want to be a man of Tradition. Not bound to a particular time and place, not a partisan in some ideological controversy or other, but a man of Tradition, guided by the Holy Spirit. I read three novels by Michael O'Brien recently, and the first two (about the Apocalypse) especially brought home the reality of spiritual warfare and what the oppression of evil means for life within Holy Mother Church. One does not dialogue with the Father of Lies; one refutes the foul serpent through faith, hope, and love. We must walk a path we do not know. Simplicity. Obedience. Trust. Unknowing. For me this means: more or less abandon attempts to argue and defend the Faith where this is not necessary; avoid idiotic controversies, especially on social media. Instead, focus your energies on becoming steeped in the identity and Tradition of Holy Mother Church: Her liturgical, dogmatic, moral, Scriptural, and ascetical/mystical traditions. This will direct me more towards liturgy, Scripture, and ascetical theology, I think (at least that's where my interests have slowly and increasingly been feeding as of late), but I will take hold of the one, and not let go of the other. I want to stand within the stream of Tradition, Itself a dynamic, powerful, life-giving force, guided by the Holy Spirit, and from that place of silent communion with the Holy Trinity - and that place alone - will I, by the grace of God, have the proper perspective to seek after the lost sheep, if the Master still wishes me to be a simple priest. 

So onto Lumen Gentium. I have already read the Constitution, and am studying it line by line. Each chapter will be its own article here, which is a practice I will probably keep for all the major decrees. I have almost finished the first chapter this way, so the first article proper on the Council - almost three years since I first voiced interest in it! - might appear as soon as next Tuesday. 

Thus: next stop, Lumen Gentium.

Praying the Office

I close my eyes, and while my lips murmur the words of the Breviary which I know by heart, I leave behind their literal meaning, and feel that I am in that endless land where the Church, militant and pilgrim, passes, walking towards the promised fatherland. I breathe with the Church in the same light by day, the same darkness by night; I see on every side of my the forces of evil that beset and assail Her; I find myself in the midst of Her battles and victories, Her prayers of anguish and Her songs of triumph, in the midst of the oppression of prisoners, the groans of the dying, the rejoicing of the armies and captains victorious. I find myself in their midst, but not as a passive spectator; nay rather, as one whose vigilance and skill, whose strength and courage can bear a decisive weight on the outcome of the struggle between good and evil, and upon the eternal destinies of individual men and of the multitude.

On Free Exercise - From a Friend

There are two civil rights at play in the dispute over same-sex marriage and the religious objection - one of which is the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. For a society which values civil rights, this makes the issue far from simple. Federal law and legal precedent already recognize that there are cases in which free exercise claims can trump generally-applicable laws - e.g. the Amish are not required to send their children to school.

Members of the creative professions forced to actively contribute to producing same-sex weddings are forced to act in a way that violates their religious integrity. It is important to note that we are not talking here about simply selling goods or value-neutral services like plumbing, but about services which involve personal creative contribution. An analogous dilemma might be faced by A Jewish tattoo artist forced to tattoo an anti-Semitic message.

And businesses do have a right to refuse services in certain cases, so long as the refusal is not arbitrary (hence, "No shirt, no shoes, no service"). Refusal based on the constitutional right to free exercise and the consistent historical teaching of all the world's major religions is not arbitrary.

Morning and Night Prayer

Almighty Lord, God of the Powers and of all flesh, Who livest in the highest and carest for the humble, Who searchest our hearts and affections, and clearly foreknowest the secrets of men; eternal and everliving Light, in Whom is no change nor shadow of variation; O Immortal King, receive our prayers which at the present time we offer to Thee from unclean lips, trusting in the multitude of Thy mercies. Forgive all sins committed by us in thought, word or deed, consciously or unconsciously, and cleanse us from all defilement of flesh and spirit. Grant us to pass the night of the whole present life with wakeful heart and sober thought, ever expecting the coming of the radiant day of the appearing of Thy only-begotten Son, our Lord and God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, when the Judge of all will come with glory to render to each according to their deeds. May we not be found fallen and idle, but awake and alert for action, ready to accompany Him into the joy and divine palace of His glory, where there is the ceaseless sound of those keeping festival and the unspeakable delight of those who behold the ineffable beauty of Thy Face. For Thou art the true Light that enlightens and sanctifies all, and all creation sings to Thee throughout the ages. Amen.