Yesterday, in a class I am taking, our midterm project was due. It was a fairly straightforward project: we were to design a small daily mass chapel for an ugly, sprawling suburban Catholic parish in Mt Vernon. Mine was quite small and plain (more out of lack of time devoted to the project than to any philosophical reason). I presented it well and the professor nodded approvingly throughout. It was going well until, while a section view of the chapel looking toward the altar was on the screen, he furrowed his brow.
"What is that thing in front of the altar?" he asked, referring to a horizontal line about 16in above the floor, with numerous vertical lines joining it to the floor every 2 feet or so.
"Oh, that's just where the section cut went through the first row of chairs in the digital model," I replied, truthfully.
"Oh!" he replied, looking very relieved. "I thought it was a communion rail! I would've had to fail you on the spot!" he laughed. "But, they're coming back, you know. Some of these priests these days are trying to carve out some sort of precinct for themselves. It's recidivism."
I attempted to muster the blandest expression I could before concluding my presentation and returning to my seat.
There you have, in one little portable story, summed up my frustrations with this class. It's not that the traditions of the Church are debated from a theological point of view, weighing the arguments for and against a certain practice - that would be an acceptable academic pursuit, in my opinion. It's that tradition is simply scoffed at and derided, as if having a communion rail was at once the silliest and most ghastly thing one could do to a church.
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Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Victor Hugo on the cosmos
I am about 3/4ths through reading Les Miserables (only about 300 pages to go!), and it is proving to be one of my favorite books that I've ever read. It seems to me that Hugo, though certainly quite wordy, moves at just the right pace. The action never gets too far ahead of itself, and the background information on history and geography never (really) overwhelms the plot. In fact, I tend to quite enjoy these background chapters, because it gives the author some space to be a bit philosophical about the story at hand. One portion of such a chapter struck me as quite beautiful and worth transcribing in its entirety:
Nothing is truly small, as anyone knows who has peered into the secrets of Nature. Though philosophy may reach no final conclusion as to original cause or ultimate extent, the contemplative mind is moved to ecstasy by this merging of forces into unity. Everything works upon everything else. The science of mathematics applies to the clouds; the radiance of starlight nourishes the rose; no thinker will dare to say that the scent of hawthorn is valueless to the constellations. Who can predict the course of a molecule? How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who can measure the action and counter-action between infinitely great and infinitely small, the play of causes in the depths of being, the cataclysms of creation? The cheese-mite has its worth; the smallest is large and the largest is small; everything balances within the laws of necessity, a terrifying vision for the mind. Between living things and objects there is a miraculous relationship; within that inexhaustible compass, from the sun to the grub, there is no room for disdain; each thing needs every other thing. Light does not carry the scents of the earth into the upper air without knowing what it is doing with them; darkness confers the essence of the stars upon the sleeping flowers. Every bird that flies carries a shred of the infinite in its claws. The process of birth is the shedding of a meteorite or the peck of a hatching swallow on the shell of its egg; it is the coming of an earthworm or of Socrates, both equally important to the scheme of things. Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision? You may choose. A patch of mould is a galaxy of blossom; a nebula is an antheap of stars. There is the same affinity, if still more inconceivable, between things of the mind and material things. Elements and principles are intermingled; they combine and marry and each increases and completes the other, so that the material and the moral world both are finally manifest. The phenomenon perpetually folds in upon itself. In the vast cosmic changes, universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, borne by the mysterious flow of invisible currents, making use of everything, wasting not a single sleeper's dream, sowing an animalcule here and shattering a star there, swaying and writhing, turning light into a force and thought into an element; disseminated yet indivisible, dissolving all things except that geometrical point, the self; reducing all things to the core which is the soul, and causing all things to flower into God; all activities from the highest to the humblest - harnessing the movements of the earth and the flight of an insect - to the secret workings of an illimitable mechanism; perhaps - who can say? - governing, if only by the universality of the law, the evolution of a comet in the heavens by the circling of infusoria in the drop of water. A machine made of spirit. A huge meshing of gears in which the first motive force is the gnat and the larges wheel the zodiac.
Nothing is truly small, as anyone knows who has peered into the secrets of Nature. Though philosophy may reach no final conclusion as to original cause or ultimate extent, the contemplative mind is moved to ecstasy by this merging of forces into unity. Everything works upon everything else. The science of mathematics applies to the clouds; the radiance of starlight nourishes the rose; no thinker will dare to say that the scent of hawthorn is valueless to the constellations. Who can predict the course of a molecule? How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who can measure the action and counter-action between infinitely great and infinitely small, the play of causes in the depths of being, the cataclysms of creation? The cheese-mite has its worth; the smallest is large and the largest is small; everything balances within the laws of necessity, a terrifying vision for the mind. Between living things and objects there is a miraculous relationship; within that inexhaustible compass, from the sun to the grub, there is no room for disdain; each thing needs every other thing. Light does not carry the scents of the earth into the upper air without knowing what it is doing with them; darkness confers the essence of the stars upon the sleeping flowers. Every bird that flies carries a shred of the infinite in its claws. The process of birth is the shedding of a meteorite or the peck of a hatching swallow on the shell of its egg; it is the coming of an earthworm or of Socrates, both equally important to the scheme of things. Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision? You may choose. A patch of mould is a galaxy of blossom; a nebula is an antheap of stars. There is the same affinity, if still more inconceivable, between things of the mind and material things. Elements and principles are intermingled; they combine and marry and each increases and completes the other, so that the material and the moral world both are finally manifest. The phenomenon perpetually folds in upon itself. In the vast cosmic changes, universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, borne by the mysterious flow of invisible currents, making use of everything, wasting not a single sleeper's dream, sowing an animalcule here and shattering a star there, swaying and writhing, turning light into a force and thought into an element; disseminated yet indivisible, dissolving all things except that geometrical point, the self; reducing all things to the core which is the soul, and causing all things to flower into God; all activities from the highest to the humblest - harnessing the movements of the earth and the flight of an insect - to the secret workings of an illimitable mechanism; perhaps - who can say? - governing, if only by the universality of the law, the evolution of a comet in the heavens by the circling of infusoria in the drop of water. A machine made of spirit. A huge meshing of gears in which the first motive force is the gnat and the larges wheel the zodiac.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Lent is coming
Lent is the sneakiest liturgical season. Unlike Advent, which is conveniently sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Lent moves around and is always a bit difficult to pin down. In the older, traditional Church calendar, Lent was preceded by Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima - three Sundays prior to Ash Wednesday that featured purple vestments and the suppression of the Alleluia, but were not quite Lenten in character. This period of preparation for Lent no longer exists as Ordinary Time now runs right into Ash Wednesday. I can't say I totally disagree with its suppression either - having a period of preparation for what is ostensibly a period or preparation seems a bit duplicitous.
In any event, I took some time last week to prepare my Lenten discipline. I went to the bookstore at the National Shrine and purchased a slim volume of the Divine Office published by Angelus Press - which is the publisher for the Society of St. Pius X, an irregular Catholic community devoted to the traditional Latin mass, which has not yet been formally reconciled with the Pope (though they're not in schism either). In any event, the book is not polemical, but instead rather forthrightly presents the traditional Divine Office (the daily prayer of the Church) as a way to grow in prayer as a layperson.
The volume includes, in Latin and in English. the prayers and Psalms for Lauds (early morning), Prime (morning), Sext (daytime), Vespers (evening), and Compline (night) for Sunday; and Prime, Sext, and Compline for every other day of the week. I am a creature of habit, and I know that if I can make a habit of setting aside time at least in the morning and the evening for Prime and Compline (which take about 15 minutes to pray), that I will actually succeed in having a more prayerful Lent. As a bonus, the book is printed and bound rather beautifully (as all liturgical books should be), which makes time with it more special.
In any event, I took some time last week to prepare my Lenten discipline. I went to the bookstore at the National Shrine and purchased a slim volume of the Divine Office published by Angelus Press - which is the publisher for the Society of St. Pius X, an irregular Catholic community devoted to the traditional Latin mass, which has not yet been formally reconciled with the Pope (though they're not in schism either). In any event, the book is not polemical, but instead rather forthrightly presents the traditional Divine Office (the daily prayer of the Church) as a way to grow in prayer as a layperson.
The volume includes, in Latin and in English. the prayers and Psalms for Lauds (early morning), Prime (morning), Sext (daytime), Vespers (evening), and Compline (night) for Sunday; and Prime, Sext, and Compline for every other day of the week. I am a creature of habit, and I know that if I can make a habit of setting aside time at least in the morning and the evening for Prime and Compline (which take about 15 minutes to pray), that I will actually succeed in having a more prayerful Lent. As a bonus, the book is printed and bound rather beautifully (as all liturgical books should be), which makes time with it more special.
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