Everybody is Not the Same

This is a liturgical post, so those of you who don’t care about the liturgy might as well quit here and wait for something exciting about my bean-plantings or base-twelve math. But if you do care about liturgy (like all right-thinking people should), stick around, take a deep breath, and try to understand that everybody is not the same.

This topic constantly comes up concerning the ill-advised changes in the liturgy effected in the 1960s. In the old days, we’re told (by which we always mean “before the liturgy was changed”), nobody understood the liturgy, because it was in Latin, and as we all know nobody can possibly understand anything that’s in a different language. That’s why nobody likes to listen to opera or Gregorian chant, or watch soccer games that are narrated in Spanish. Because nobody understood the liturgy, nobody participated in it. Everybody just sat there with their eyes down at a prayer book, or even praying the rosary. They were praying the rosary because that was something they could do in a language they knew; they were reading prayer books—many of which had prayers other than those of the Mass in them—because they were in English, or whatever language those other people speak, not in Latin, which nobody speaks. This is all a Very Bad Thing. People should all be paying attention to the prayers of the liturgy themselves, word for word, and they should not be paying attention to anything else. That’s the only way to participate in the liturgy.

This all ignores two facts, however. One, that it’s possible to understand the liturgy without understanding each individual word said therein; and two, that everybody is not the same.

As regards the first point, this seems clear. There is a famous story about Pope St. Pius X, who controversially (at that time) wanted to move the age of First Holy Communion down to the age of reason, seven or eight years old. Many people objected to this, saying that children that young, even if they had reached the age of reason, couldn’t be expected to understand the greatness of the Sacrament they were about to receive. Pope St. Pius X turned to a young girl, seven or eight years old, and asked her, “Whom do you receive when you receive Communion?” The little girl responded, “I receive Jesus.” The great pope then said, “This girl understands the greatness of the Sacrament, and can worthily receive it.”

It’s certainly true that the vast bulk of people in the old days did not understand Latin, and consequently were unable to understand the words of the priest, as he said them, solely by listening during the Mass. However, that most emphatically does not mean that they didn’t understand the Mass. They knew, from diligent instruction by competent catechists, that the Mass is the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ at Calvary, that this Sacrifice is reenacted in an unbloody manner on the altar every single day at every single Mass, and that by the Mass Jesus Christ becomes truly present, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, under the species (the appearance) of bread and wine. What more does he need to understand about the Mass? Does he understand it any less because he can’t decline mensa or give all the possible forms of suscipere?

Go through a Novus Ordo Mass, where most of the people don’t even remember the times when all Roman Masses were in Latin, and see how many of them understand the nature of the Mass as well as those poor, benighted souls of the elder days, who were cruelly forced to have Mass in a dead language for centuries!

Second, it’s important to remember that everybody is different. For many people, learning Latin and following the liturgy orally as much as possible would be very beneficial; for many, attempting to follow each individual word of the priest would be more distracting than anything else. For some, it is better to remain silent and meditate upon the sufferings of Christ; some of these people will even (horror or horrors!) choose to do so by praying the rosary during Mass, as a way of focusing their attentions on the Sacrifice that is being renewed on the altar. Some will follow along, in Latin or in the vernacular, in a missalette; others will find it more helpful to pray other prayers, usually found in a prayer book, which more effectively focus his attention on the great mysteries of the Mass.

In the words of the great Pope Pius XII in Mediator Dei:

Many of the faithful are unable to use the Roman missal even though it is written in the vernacular; nor are all capable of understanding correctly the liturgical rites and formulas. So varied and diverse are men’s talents and characters that it is impossible for all to be moved and attracted to the same extent by community prayers, hymns and liturgical services. Moreover, the needs and inclinations of all are not the same, nor are they always constant in the same individual. Who, then, would say, on account of such a prejudice, that all these Christians cannot participate in the Mass nor share its fruits? On the contrary, they can adopt some other method which proves easier for certain people; for instance, they can lovingly meditate on the mysteries of Jesus Christ or perform other exercises of piety or recite prayers which, though they differ from the sacred rites, are still essentially in harmony with them.

How can we argue with that?

One of the constant objections to the old liturgy was that it was run by “liturgical nazis,” who insisted that all liturgies be the same. But why, then, did we in the old days so explicitly recognize these many valid ways of participating in the liturgy, while in these new, enlightened times we insist that everybody must be the same?

Shocking Revelation: Promiscuity leads to Sexually Transmitted Diseases!

We learn from the Catholic News Service a shocking truth recently uncovered by the UN: having sex with fewer people decreases the chances of contracting AIDS!

So simple, it’s brilliant! Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? All these years we’ve been throwing condoms all over Africa, billions of condoms, and yet AIDS just continues to spread! Why didn’t anyone ever think of just asking people to limit their sexual contact?

Oh, wait. Somebody did. The Catholic Church. That’s right.

The problem is that we live in modernity, and modernity wants to have its cake and eat it, too. It wants to eat everything and anything it wants and still remain trim. It wants to sleep with anything it feels like sleeping with and never get sick. It wants all the joy and fun in the world but none of the consequences. It wants negative behavior with freedom from the negative results. It wants anything other than self-control, the submission of the passions to the reason.

The only way to lose weight—short of invasive surgery, anyway—is to eat less and move more; that is, to control the appetite, to subject the quantity and quality of the food we eat to the control of the reason. Similarly, the only way to prevent the negative effects of unvirtuous sexual activity is to subject the sexual appetites to the control of the reason. This means limiting sexual activity to the married state.

Modernity can’t have its cake and eat it, too. We need to abandon modernity and return to sensible ethical thinking focused on the virtues, perfected by the grace of Jesus Christ.

Praise be to Christ the King!

On Masculinity

As Catholics, we’re faced constantly with statements about what it is to be a woman, and that’s a very good thing. Real, genuine womanhood has been under violent assault from feminism on one side and misogyny on another for well over a century, and countering that with such delightful and informative works as Alice von Hildebrand’s The Privilege of Being a Woman is important. But we rarely hear anything about what it is to be a man, and by “man” here I mean not simply a rational animal but a male rational animal. What does it mean to be a man? Is there a privilege to being a man, as there is to being a woman?

The first thing to address here is that we can consider “being a man” in two senses: the natural and the supernatural; that is, the order of nature and the order of grace. Grace perfects nature, it does not change it; but man is a natural being, who by nature has a supernatural soul but not grace, and consequently we must consider the question from both these vantage points. We’ll begin with being a man in the order of nature, and move on to being a man in the order of grace.

In the order of nature, man is fundamentally a husband and a father; that is his primary role in life. It is true, of course, that some men voluntarily give up the joys and trials of wife and children in order to dedicate themselves to the service of God, but we must remember that this sacrifice is fundamentally one of grace, not one of nature. To show this (granted, this is not a demonstration, but it’s still very persuasive dialectically), we need merely look to the account of the creation of man, in which God gives His charge to His new creature:

et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam ad imaginem Dei creavit illum masculum et feminam creavit eos benedixitque illis Deus et ait crescite et multiplicamini et replete terram et subicite eam et dominamini piscibus maris et volatilibus caeli et universis animantibus quae moventur super terram

Which can be translated (Englished by myself):

And God created man to His own image; He created him to the image of God, He created them male and female; and God blessed them, and said, “Increase and be multiplied, and fill the earth, and make it subject; and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the flying things of the sky, and all living things which move upon the earth.

The very first things that the Scriptures tell us about man are the following:

1. He is made in the image of God; that is, he has a spiritual soul.
2. He is male and female.
3. He is to increase and be multiplied.
4. He is to be lord of the earth.

The Scriptures, wisely as always, tell us very simply and directly what man is and then what man is for on the natural level; by which I do not mean on the physical level only, but rather in the order of nature. Man is a spiritual being, made in the image of God; man is also a physical being, in which he is divided into male and female; man is ordered toward an increase in numbers, which as we all know is accomplished by the relationship between male and female; and man is to be the lord of creation.

More, our own reason tells us that fundamentally man is a husband and father before all else. Man is, as we know, a social being; he cannot thrive—reach his appropriate end, the contemplation of God—except within a community of other men. Man belongs to many such communities, the highest of which is the state, and the lowest of which is the family. It is clear that the family, consisting of a husband, wife, children, and sometimes others, is the most basic of those communities, because it is ordered to the most basic of human needs. That is, it is ordered toward the provision of the daily needs of mankind and to the continuation of the human species. Consequently, on the most basic level, man is part of a family; but the role of the man, the male human being, in the family is that of husband and father. Therefore, husband and father is man’s most basic role.

Now, the above falls far short of demonstration; it assumes certain principles and it skips certain steps. But the assumptions are those that could hardly be doubted by any believing Catholic, so I will not spend any further time examining them. It’s clear that a man is a husband and father at the most basic level of the order of nature; we can proceed now to determining what exactly that means, at which point we enter the order of grace.

Once again, the Depositum fidei, the Deposit of Faith, tells us exactly what it means to be a husband and father:

mulieres viris suis subditae sint sicut Domino quoniam vir caput est mulieris sicut Christus caput est ecclesiae ipse salvator corporis sed ut ecclesia subiecta est Christo ita et mulieres viris suis in omnibus viri diligite uxores sicut et Christus dilexit ecclesiam et se ipsum tradidit pro ea ut illam sanctificaret mundans lavacro aquae in verbo ut exhiberet ipse sibi gloriosam ecclesiam non habentem maculam aut rugam aut aliquid eiusmodi sed ut sit sancta et inmaculata ita et viri debent diligere uxores suas ut corpora sua qui suam uxorem diligit se ipsum diligit nemo enim umquam carnem suam odio habuit sed nutrit et fovet eam sicut et Christus ecclesiam quia membra sumus corporis eius de carne eius et de ossibus eius propter hoc relinquet homo patrem et matrem suam et adherebit uxori suae et erunt duo in carne una sacramentum hoc magnum est ego autem dico in Christo et in ecclesia verumtamen et vos singuli unusquisque suam uxorem sicut se ipsum diligat uxor autem ut timeat virum

Which, being Englished, means:

Women, be subject to your own men, as to the Lord; for the man is the head of the woman, as Christ is the head of the Church; He is the savior of the body. But as the Church is put under Christ, so also women to their own men in all things. Men, love [your] wives as also Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her, in order that He might sanctify her, cleaning [her] with a washing of water in the Word. That He might show to her the glory of the Church, having no spot or wrinkle or anything of that type, but that she might be holy and unspotted. So also men ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his own wife loves himself. For no one ever holds his own flesh in hatred, but nourishes and maintains it, as Christ does the Church. For we are the members of His Body, from His flesh and from His bones. Because of this a man leaves his own father and mother and clings to his wife, and they shall be in one flesh. This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the Church. Nevertheless, may each one of you love his own wife as himself; and let the woman fear the man.

This requires exegesis, of course, but everything we need know about husband and wife is contained at least in seed in this single passage.

First, notice that there is nothing about mutual subjection here.* There is not a mutual subjection of husband to wife and wife to husband; St. Paul says nothing of the sort. He says, in fact, that wives should be subject to their husbands “as the Church is put under Christ” (ut ecclesia subiecta est Christo). To say, then, that the husband should be subject to his wife just as the wife is subject to the husband is to say that the Church is subject to Christ just as Christ is subject to the Church, which is blasphemy. Christ is not subject to the Church, nor is a husband subject to his wife. Rather, he is “the head of the woman, as Christ is the head of the Church” (vir caput est mulieris sicut Christus caput est ecclesiae).

However, the man is the head of his wife “as Christ is the head of the Church.” This means that his role in the family is that of savior; “for He is the savior of the body” (ipse salvator corporis). His role is not that of a tyrant, lording it over his wife like some Byzantine emperor; he is the head of his wife as Christ is the Head of the Church, which means his role is one of sacrifice, not of opulence.

St. Paul tells men to “love [your] wives as also Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her, in order that He might sanctify her” (viri diligite uxores sicut et Christus dilexit ecclesiam et se ipsum tradidit pro ea). And remember how Christ gave Himself up for the Church; He sacrificed His entire life, from the moment of His birth until that of His agonizing death, doing everything for the sake of His Body, the Church. So must a man do for his wife, and of course for his children. He must give himself up for them, indeed pour himself out for them, as Christ poured out His very Blood for the Church.

This sacrificial leadership will take many different forms. Sometimes, of course, it will take the form of martyrdom, as Christ’s did. More often, however, the necessities of family life will lead to a different type of leadership. Men must be prepared to sacrifice their own comforts for the good of their family, for example. Primarily, they must remember that as the head of the house, they are an example for the house; they must regulate their behavior carefully, providing a good example for all, especially any children. They must be moderate in their expenses. They must remember that no matter how much fishing or drinking may attract them, they have more important duties to which they must attend.

Men must carefully mortify their senses, directing themselves by the reason and not by the passions. For if the head of the body (in this case, the house) cannot govern itself rationally, then how can it govern the body rationally? A necessary part of this mortification is, of course, the fast. Little can be more impressive to the youthful mind than the all-powerful father, the head of the house, voluntarily sacrificing such a basic necessity in pursuit of higher ends. But the bulk of a father’s mortification will more likely be simple and mundane. Rather than watching a baseball game, he goes out and plays one with his children. Rather than reading a book to himself, he takes up one for his children. Rather than sleeping in in the morning, he awakes early with the children and allows his wife to do so. These are all minor things, barely worth mentioning in themselves; yet what more powerful witness to the family can there be? What better imitation of Christ in daily life, than to constantly sacrifice small things, as He did? What better way, absent a direct martyrdom, to give up one’s whole life in sacrifice for one’s family? Majorem hac dilectionem nemo habet, ut animam suam ponat qui pro amicis suis (“no one hath a love greater than this, that a man should lay down his own self for his friends”; St. John 15:13). It is not a direct and single outpouring of a lot of blood, to be sure, but it is a constant pouring out of a little. This is truly a fundamental aspect of manly character.

This sacrifice takes its greatest form in the order of grace, outside of the family; namely, a man sacrifices the very joys of wife and children in order to better serve God. As Christ, Who Himself determined to forgo those joys, told us:

Sunt enim eunuchi, qui de matris utero sic nati sunt : et sunt eunuchi, qui facti sunt ab hominibus : et sunt eunuchi, qui seipsos castraverunt propter regnum cælorum.

Englished:

For there are eunuchs who are born thus from the womb of the mother; and there are eunuchs who are made by men; and there are eunuchs who have castrated themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

Our Lord is not here advocating deliberate self-mutilation, of course; He is telling us that some men can and should forgo this great joy and this great blessing, in order to obtain still greater ones; namely, the kingdom of heaven. This state, which we call celibacy, is objectively a greater one than marriage; as St. Paul said,

Volo enim omnes vos esse sicut meipsum : sed unusquisque proprium donum habet ex Deo : alius quidem sic, alius vero sic. Dico autem non nuptis, et viduis : bonum est illis si sic permaneant, sicut et ego. Quod si non se continent, nubant. Melius est enim nubere, quam uri.

Englished:

For I wish that all of you be as I myself am; but each one has a proper gift from God. One indeed has this [gift], another truly has that [gift]. But I speak to the unmarried and to the widows: it is good for them if they remain thus, as also I do. But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to be burned.

In other words, each has his own proper gift; and for those to whom celibacy is given, it is objectively better to take it than to leave it. This is truly the greatest sacrifice short of martyrdom that it is possible to undertake; a great and manly sacrifice, a sacrifice of the greatest and most natural joys of this earthly life. Not all are called to it, but it is a great calling nevertheless.

Those called to the sacrifice of celibacy have lives which involve many other sacrifices, as well, as do those not so called. One thing that the celibate generally also sacrifice is the masculine gift of militancy. Men are militant; it is a fundamental and inexorable part of our natures. Men love contest and struggle; we love sport precisely because it permits such struggle. Even many of our less physical games are martial in spirit and terms; think of chess as an example. Even tasks as simple as crossword puzzles are made by men into physical combat, where one finishing before the other is seen as a triumph, and analogies to real, martial battle are easily and naturally drawn.

This militancy is rooted in the nature of mankind. Essentially, the physical basis for it is simple: men do not get pregnant, while women do. This is the fundamental reason that almost all warriors in almost all societies throughout history have been males; it is the reason why physiological differences between men and women are what they are. Men, as a whole, are bigger, stronger, and faster than women are; this is because of our martial role. We are the warriors of the human race; this is both our sorrow and our pride.

Men, as the leaders of a family, are primarily responsible for a wife and for children. As such, when that wife and those children come under physical threat, it is man’s responsibility to fight against that threat. Men have risen to this throughout the ages, and only in very recent times has anyone seriously denied it. Women, particularly when pregnant but also when caring for children, are vulnerable; they are also more vulnerable than men simply because they are not built for physical altercation, as men are. Man’s militancy is directed to the protection of his woman and of his children; he has a duty to train himself in the use of the tools necessary for that protection, and to keep himself as far as possible in the physical condition which will allow him to use them, if necessary.

This militancy also extends beyond the family, to larger communities and to the state as a whole. Sometimes this means that a man must leave his wife and children in order to protect them. This is a great sorrow for both man and family, and it should only be required of men when absolutely necessary, and when the necessity of it can be unambiguously demonstrated under just war doctrine.

Man’s militancy further extends, under Christian guidance, to what is now called chivalry; that is, to the protection of the poor, the weak, and those otherwise unable to defend themselves. The Catholic man will defend his family; but he will also defend other women without anyone to protect them; children; the poor; orphans; widows; those in the religious life; and anyone else who requires it. Chivalry is not limited to martial defense; the chivalrous man, the man who really embraces and directs the militancy which is a real and necessary part of the masculine character, will go well beyond that, offering his physical assistance to anyone who may require it. This extends from things as simple as helping old ladies cross the street to things as complex as volunteering for local “big brother” programs. The specifics will always vary according to time, resources, talents, and inclinations; but that the good man is also a chivalrous man is not open to doubt.

This, then, is the fundamental nature of being a man; leadership and sacrifice, in imitation of the greatest Leader of all. Truly, there is a privilege to being a man, just as there is to being a woman.

Praise be to Christ the King!

* Yes, I know about the late pope’s words in Mulieris Dignitatem. The English translation posted on the Vatican’s website reads, “whereas in the relationship between Christ and the Church the subjection is only on the part of the Church, in the relationship between husband and wife the “subjection” is not one-sided but mutual” (Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 24). This passage is disturbing on a number of levels, most especially because it directly and quite transparently contradicts the words of Ephesians 5, which specifically state that the subjection of the wife to the husband is “as” the subject of the Church to Christ. The English here does seem to be a fair translation of the Latin text (Sed, cum in necessitudine Christi-Ecclesiae, subiectio solius Ecclesiae sit, in necessitudine mariti-uxoris, subiectio non est unius dumtaxat partis, verum prorsus reciproca), which means we cannot simply pass this off as an erroneous translation, as we can so often with troublesome statements in this sad times. Can the late pope’s words be interpreted in a way that does not offend the Scriptures? Yes, they can; but they must be interpreted as meaning that the man’s subjection is one of service, not one of obedience, in the way that Christ was the servant of the Apostles when He washed their feet, even though He was truly their Master. Calling this a “subjection,” however, especially a mutual subjection, is extremely misleading and should not be perpetuated.

Movie Review: Black Robe

I dusted off my movie case for Black Robe tonight, and I don’t regret a single second of the entire thing. (Almost.) You should watch this movie soon. Not only is it an accurate depiction of life in early New France, it is an accurate depiction of both the French in America and of the Indians themselves. No Dances with Wolves, James Fenimore Cooper “noble red man” nonsense here. We see the Indians as they really were, with both their many virtues and their many vices. And, for that matter, we see the French in the same light. Furthermore, I’ve rarely seen a movie that so beautifully portrays the beautiful country of the near North. It was filmed entirely on location in Quebec, and it shows what a lovely country this is, and still in many places largely empty. It’s nothing short of visually stunning in that regard, and makes me want to go back to my native homeland once again. (Upstate New York is different, but akin.)

Before I begin, I should elaborate: this is a modern production and it has some problems. The most significant problem (the only significant problem, in my view) is its sexual explicitness. There are three scenes in the movie that required aversion of the eyes. They fall only barely short of hard-core pornography; they are brief, but inexcusable. If you are particularly sensitive to these things, it’s best if you simply skip this one. In this case, you can get the benefits of it by reading this review. (!)

That said, the sexual scenes do serve a purpose. Certainly, no purpose whatsoever can justify such immorality, but while this fact doesn’t make these scenes good, it at least makes them less bad. The first is an entirely random incident of two Indians engaging in sexual intercourse; the purpose of this scene is to show the utterly casual nature with which the Indians (this tribe of them, at least) treat the issue. The second is an incident of an Indian and a Frenchman having intercourse; the purpose of this scene is to show what causes the Frenchman to “go native.” As usual, that cause is a woman. The third is an incident in which the materialism of the natives is used, by another Indian, to effect the party’s escape when captured. This is the most graphic. All of them require turning away from, and all are completely unnecessary; the fact of the relations could easily have been made clear without actually displaying them. But that is what they’re there for.

The French missionaries in the New World were almost universally Jesuits, whose habit was (is) a black robe. The Indians, therefore, almost universally knew missionaries as “Blackrobes.” The movie is the story of Father LaForgue, an idealistic thirtysomething missionary who seeks nothing but bringing the Good News to the savages. For the first half of the film, we are intermittently treated to scenes from Fr. LaForgue’s earlier life, prior to coming to New France. The first is Fr. LaForgue, still a layman, coming to serve the Mass of a Jesuit priest in a great cathedral. That priest turns, and LaForgue can see that he is horribly disfigured in his face and in both hands.

“Good morning,” the priest says, as LaForgue vests in cassock and surplice, “you are to serve my Mass?” He notices LaForgue looking at his deformities, and he responds, “The savages did this to me.” LaForgue asks, “In New France?” The priest affirms this, and says something along the lines of, “They are savages, just as the English and Germans were savages before we brought our Faith to them.” He then tells LaForgue, “I am going back…What greater glory can there be?” Speaking, of course, of bringing light to the darkness, of teaching about Jesus to those who know nothing of Him.

The second scene of LaForgue’s earlier life is him sitting with his mother listening to a pretty young woman play the recorder. His mother remarks to him what a beautiful girl she is, and how talented she is, and from what a good family she comes. LaForgue is clearly, from his dress and demeanor, from a wealthy and important family; and the girl is indeed pretty, and she does indeed play well. But he will not be moved; his meeting with the missionary in the cathedral has struck him, and the next time we meet younger LaForgue, he is in Jesuit garb, meeting with his mother, who is praying before a statue of St. Jeanne d’Arc. She tells him that she prays for St. Joan to guide him, because she is certain that God has chosen him, LaForgue, to die for the good of the Indians.

In the New World, LaForgue spends some time learning the Algonquin and Huron languages, and the movie opens with him completing this stage of his mission. His superior is speaking with Samuel de Champlain, the great founder of New France, about obtaining an Indian escort for LaForgue to go to the Huron mission, hundreds of miles to the west, through raw, untamed wilderness, near the territory of the hostile Iroquois. Eventually, Champlain acquiesces; and we are treated to one of the most poetic juxtapositions I’ve seen in all of cinema.

The Algonquin chief we follow for most of the movie, Chomina, is getting dressed. He’s clearly putting on his finest to meet the great French chief, whom the Indians know only as “Champlain.” He puts on his paint; others help him with his paint and his clothes; he wears great furs, including a great bear fur as a cloak, and a tall headdress replete with pelts and feathers. As we watch Chomina prepare for the meeting, we also watch Champlain prepare for it. He puts on his armor; his royal pendant depicting his authority as governor of New France; his broad hat, with its plume; and, most poignantly, a great bearskin which he wears as a cloak. Then, while the Indians wait outside the walls of the fledging colony of Quebec City, his soldiers line up, with their breastplates, plumed hats, swords, and matchlocks, and his drummer and fifer proceed him in solemn procession down the hill to the Indian encampment. As he processes, Chomina is led to the meeting place with his braves beating drums and singing along with their women.

Indians not participating in the meeting are singing and dancing about the fire, playing their drums and shaking their rattles; Frenchmen not participating are also dancing (albeit not around the fire), playing their own instruments and singing their own songs. It’s a powerful reminder: we’re not really all that different, in the externals. It’s the core things that vary, our fundamental beliefs. The necessities of life are almost always mostly the same.

In exchange for some knifes, tools, beads, and a few pots, the Indians under Chomina agree to escort Fr. LaForgue and another young Frenchman, Daniel (who agrees just prior that, after he returns from the Hurons, he will go to France and study to become a Jesuit) to the Huron mission. They leave the next morning. We watch Fr. LaForgue relate to the Indians, and at first things seem to be going rather well. He laughs with them, rows with them, rests with them, works with them, eats with them. They seem to accept him as a man, like themselves. But things take a turn for the worse when LaForgue first shows them something that they cannot understand.

Chomina is watching LaForgue writing in a journal, and asks him what he’s doing. LaForgue responds, “I am making words.” Chomina, who knows nothing of writing, is confused and says, “You’re not speaking.” So LaForgue asks Chomina to tell him something that he doesn’t know; Chomina says, “My woman’s mother died in the snow last winter.” LaForgue writes it down, then brings it to Daniel and hands it to him. Daniel reads it, and the Indians, including Chomina, are shocked; they are convinced that it must be some type of black magic. This is historically viable; nonliterate peoples often, upon first experiencing writing, believe it to be some kind of magic. But LaForgue doesn’t realize this, thinking that they are merely amazed. “There are still greater things than this that I can teach you,” he tells them, unaware that they are already thinking of killing him because he must be a demon, able to impart knowledge to others without speaking as men must do.

They become increasingly mystified by LaForgue as time goes on. One example of this is the source of our second sexual scene; Daniel, losing his idealism and becoming more and more sympathetic to native customs, begins a sexual relationship with Annuka, Chomina’s daughter. She asks him at one point, “Is the Black Robe a demon?” He’s amused by the question and replies in the negative. She says, “He must be a demon; Black Robes never have sex with women.” He says, “It’s a promise they make to their God.” Annuka asks, “Why would you make a promise like that?” The Indians were, fundamentally, materialists; they made gods of the material things around them. They were therefore unable to understand why a man might give up these material things for the sake of immaterial ones. Daniel and Annuka’s relationship makes that clear; and as Daniel becomes more and more like the Indians, he becomes more and more unable to understand LaForgue and his mission.

Another interesting scene involves tobacco, which was not yet well-known in France. (The movie takes place in 1634.) Daniel, who had smoked it with the Indians in Quebec, offers a pipe to LaForgue, and says, “They say it is soothing, once one is used to it.” LaForgue tries it and coughs, saying, “It will take some time.” The Indians ask him, “Black Robe, tell us: will we have tobacco in your Paradise?” LaForgue responds, correctly, that they will have no need of tobacco, or of anything else; they will possess God Himself, and want nothing. They shocked response: “No women?” Once again, we’re confronted with a fundamental clash of worldview; LaForgue, and at first Daniel, are able to understand why a man would sacrifice material comforts for immaterial glory, while the Indians cannot comprehend this.

One of the Indian women is pregnant, and she gives birth one night; the child, sadly, does not survive. The Indians sing a mourning song, and the woman takes the child into the woods and leaves the body in a tree. LaForgue follows her, and christens the child after she has left. However, the Indian shaman Mestigoit, convinced that LaForgue is a demon, follows LaForgue along with Chomina and some others; Mestigoit tells them that LaForgue is casting a spell on the infant, and they are finally convinced to abandon LaForgue in the forest, and proceed to the winter hunting grounds.

Daniel has gone so native by this time that, though the Indians abandon both Frenchmen, Daniel takes the only remaining canoe and leaves LaForgue behind. He pursues the Indians throughout the night, while LaForgue sleeps without shelter under a tree, thanks God for his suffering, and asks for still more if it will bring salvation to the Indians. Finally, one of the Indians decides to kill Daniel, and nearly does before Chomina stops him. Chomina says, “I may be stupid, but I agreed to take him to the Huron mission.” Chomina is an honorable man, and was convinced against his better judgment to abandon LaForgue; he, his wife, his son (who looks to be about ten), and his daughter Annuka return with Daniel to LaForgue.

They are ambushed there, however, by a party of Iroquois, who put an arrow through Chomina’s wife’s neck. LaForgue fearlessly strides out into the middle of the combat (where Daniel makes an excellent, and historically accurate, defense of the party with his matchlock, firing one shot and killing an Iroquois warrior and then using it very effectively as a club, all it was good for once it had released its load). He is not fighting, though; he proceeds straight to Chomina’s wife and baptizes her, whereupon he is clubbed on the back of the head by an Iroquois.

Daniel, LaForgue, Chomina, Annuka, and Chomina’s son (the boy never got a name, as far as I could tell) are led by leashes to the Iroquois village (I suppose they were Mohawks, but they’re never identified precisely). There, Daniel asks LaForgue for forgiveness; LaForgue inexplicably responds, “God is with us; He is the one who forgives us.” (I have no idea why, in this movie where the missions are portrayed so sympathetically, confession is somehow missed at this crucial juncture, especially since the writer apparently remembered it a bit later.) The three men are forced to run the gauntlet; LaForgue is hit in the head and falls, whereupon Daniel, who has recovered his European sensibilities, runs back through the gauntlet, braving the clubs of the Iroquois, and drags him the rest of the way through. Chomina is badly wounded by the gauntlet. The three men are then dragged into a longhouse along with the women, stripped naked, and LaForgue is brought forward. The Iroquois chief cuts off his finger with a mussel shell; LaForgue never cries out, accepting it as his cross for the conversion of the Indians.

Chomina tells Daniel and Laforgue to sing; while Chomina sings an Indian song, Daniel and LaForgue together sing Ave Maria. As they sing, an Iroquois comes forward and slits Chomina’s young son’s throat, throwing him to the ground without ever batting an eye. The Iroquois chief tells them that only more pain is in store for them, and they will die slowly. They then are left, bizarrely with only one guard, for the night.

Chomina asks Daniel, “You wanted to be one of us. What do you think now?” Daniel responds, “That the Iroquois are not men; they are beasts.” But Chomina shakes his head. “No, they are the same as us. If they show pity, they seem weak.” I understand that some criticized the movie as racist, because it showed the Indians as so violent. But this is a fact: American Indians were violent. They were violent in a way that most Europeans, even in a violent age of religious warfare and burning at the stake, couldn’t comprehend. They had brought the disgusting art of torture to a perfection that would’ve made the most hardened jailer at the Tower of London blush in shame. This movie downplayed real Indian violence; it did not exaggerate it.

Which brings me to the best part of the movie: it is honest. The Indians are shown as virtuous in many ways. They fight bravely; they are loyal to kin; they share everything with one another, without any question. But they are superstitious; they are violent; they are unable to look toward the future in any meaningful way. The Europeans are also portrayed honestly, whether it is good or bad; I see no reason why the historical violence of the northern tribes should be whitewashed. It’s not a question of racism; it’s one of history. And this movie is true to history; if anything, it’s kind to the Indians in this regard.

Our third sex scene comes now, when Annuka asks for water from the guard, who releases it on condition of sexual intercourse. To effect that intercourse, he was forced to cut her bonds, and after a few moments she bashes him over the head with his own club. Chomina, Annuka, LaForgue, and Daniel now escape, and begin the long journey toward the Huron mission. Chomina has been having a dream about his own death, and sees the place from his dream during the trip. He therefore insists that they leave him there to die, explaining that the dream world is real. This is as close as the Indians come to a notion of an immaterial world: the dreams. Annuka at one point insists, loudly and confrontationally, that the dream world is real. Because he dreamed that he would die there, he must die there. Annuka, understanding, leaves him freezing in the snow.

But LaForgue tries one more time to convert him, telling him that God loves him, and wants to welcome him into Paradise. Behind him, Annuka demands that LaForgue let Chomina die on his own, and tells Daniel that LaForgue is a fool for trying to disregard the dream. Daniel, however, remembers; he says, “No; he [LaForgue] loves him [Chomina].” Chomina refuses baptism, but he does say goodbye to LaForgue and call him “friend.” LaForgue, honoring Chomina’s wishes, leaves with Annuka and Daniel.

Finally, the river freezes, and the canoes can go no further. Annuka insists at that point that she and Daniel abandon LaForgue, because in her father’s dream “the Black Robe walks alone.” Daniel, again, has remembered; he tells LaForgue, “Father, I will go with you.” But LaForgue refuses. “She needs you; she has lost everything because of us.” And he proceeds the remaining way to the Huron mission alone.

Arriving, he finds that one of the two priests at the mission has been killed; his body lays unburied in the nave of the small, wooden church inside the Huron village. The other priest, Fr. Jerome, is very old, and at death’s door himself. A plague had hit the village, and many had died; the Indians believed that the Jesuits had brought it with them, to punish those who did not accept the Faith. Fr.Jerome felt sure that the Indians would torture them to death the next day. However, Fr. Jerome says, we do have hope; they may believe that baptism will cure them. LaForgue protests respectfully; he says they should not baptize the Indians unless they understand. The two priests hear one another’s confessions; the older one dies in the night.

The next morning, LaForgue stands before the altar of God and begs Him to help him teach the Indians. He then rings the church bell and comes outside. The Indians come outside, as well; it is the first time they have seen Laforgue, except when he was burying the dead priest, when they talked about killing him. One of the Indians then said, “The Black Robes want us to stop obeying the dreams, to have only one wife, to stop killing our enemies. If we do this, we will no longer be Hurons.” One Indian says, “We will cut pieces of their flesh from them and make them eat.” (This is one of the real tortures Indians in this part of the world would inflict upon one another, as well as upon missionaries who got on their bad sides.)

This morning, cooler heads prevailed; the Huron chief tells LaForgue, “Many want to kill you, Black Robe.” LaForgue nods. “I know.” “If we take your water sorcery, will it heal us?” LaForgue tells them no, that it will not heal them, but that it will open up for them a place in Paradise. To be healed, they must pray, and God may listen to their prayers. The chief then looks up at LaForgue and says, “Black Robe, do you love us?”

LaForgue remembers; he remembers all the kindnesses and cruelties he’d experienced at the hands of the natives, up to and including the amputation of his finger, and then nods his head. “Yes,” he says. The chief responds, “Then, baptize us.” LaForgue does so, baptizing the whole village.

And that, my friends, is what this movie is all about; it’s about love. It is never questioned, throughout the whole movie, that LaForgue is in New France, risking his life, enduring incredible hardships and pains, solely for love: love of the Indians, so badly in need of enlightenment, like the English and Germans before they had been taught the Faith. Daniel finally understands that when he rebukes Annuka concerning LaForgue’s final attempt at conversion: “No, he loves him.” Missions make no sense whatsoever, except in the light of this incredible love.

If you can get past those sexual scenes, this movie is well worth the watching. It will impress you, remind you, and inspire you.

Praise be to Christ the King!

East and West Again

No, I haven’t forgotten my promised examination of the Roman liturgy; I’ve just decided that I’m going to write the whole thing, then release it in parts here and make changes where necessary. So you all won’t see it for a while.

But, to tide us over, let us remember this great story from Michael Davies (RIP):

Kasper went on this ecumenical mission to Athens, attended the Greek Orthodox liturgy in the morning and in the afternoon he was having lunch. Then the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Athens, who is a good friend of Count Capponi and Una Voce, asked his Eminence how he had enjoyed the liturgy in the morning. “Oh wonderful, wonderful,” said the Cardinal, “I thought I was in heaven.” Then the Archbishop said that he thought perhaps that they should make some changes to the Greek liturgy because, perhaps for modern people today, some of it is too mystifying. Kasper said, “No that would be a mortal sin. You mustn�t change a thing. Keep it exactly as it is.” And the Archbishop said, “Then why did you destroy your liturgy which was the equivalent of ours?”

Thank you, Archbishop; I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Praise be to Christ the King!

On the Sex Abuse Scandal: A Self-Imposed Crisis

It’s died down a bit since my other postings on this question, but the sexual abuse scandal nevertheless rages on, and scandalous it is indeed. But it is, nevertheless, a self-imposed scandal, imposed by those who are currently spending most of their time decrying it.

I recently reread a book that I hadn’t looked at in a long time, since the American priestly sex abuse scandal died down. It’s an excellent book by Michael S. Rose, Goodbye, Good men, a detailed exposé of the atmosphere of American seminaries in the last quarter of the last century. I’m not sure how much things have or have not improved; but the bottom line is, this is very scary reading. If anyone wants to know how this scandal got started, Goodbye, Good Men is a pretty good place to start.

Rose shows pretty conclusively that what Fr. Andrew Greeley called the Lavendar Mafia has controlled most seminaries for some time, and that they’ve used that control to consistently undermine traditional Catholic teaching in all areas, particularly sexual morality. It’s become increasingly difficult for orthodox men to make it through these seminaries; the decreasing number of candidates who do make it through, though, are much more likely to be heretics than otherwise. These seminaries prevent those who accept Church teaching and Church discipline from advancing, while those who reject it are encouraged and ordained. These priests are taught not to like their vows, particularly their vow of celibacy; they are taught not to support traditional teaching on Catholic morality, encouraged to espouse more modern notions.

Now, when we have a scandal that’s due precisely to priests rejecting their vows and the Church’s sexual morality, the same people who have been encouraging these views say that we ought to make them formal Church teaching. We need to allow married priests (possible, but unwise) and women priests (impossible); we need to loosen up strictures on sexual morality. But it’s precisely that sort of thinking and behavior that produced this problem in the first place. Priests were taught not to remain faithful to their vows, that these vows were relics of medieval theology, that it was important to live one’s faith updated in the modern world. Some of these priests proceeded to do exactly that, and by doing so committed what even our degraded society considers heinous crimes. Yet the fact that priests sinned by abandoning their vows is taken as proof that we need to dispense priests from their vows.

Of course, this is idiotic. If these criminal priests had been faithful to their vows, they would not have become criminals. This situation proves that priests must be more serious about their vows, more strict in their sexual morality, not less. It proves that seminaries must be more careful about screening their applicants for sexual deviancy, not less. This scandal is certainly scandalous; but it’s scandalous not because the Catholic Church is protecting herself, but because she’s not. She needs to return to her real principles and her ancient traditions; that and only that will heal the sickness which is flagging her so severely.

Goodbye, Good Men shows in frightening detail how the priesthood was emasculated and deCatholicized. Let us pray for priests, for seminarians, and especially for bishops, that they may form and be formed correctly according to the teaching of the Church, to help us all into life everlasting. Amen.

Praise be to Christ the King!

How to Learn Latin

Not long ago I posted an urging to learn Latin as a vital part of revivifying Catholic culture in the world. Well, it’s been off and on, but lately it’s been mostly on, and I think I’ve made enough progress to be able to recommend some tactics for learning Latin. This is, sadly, only for the purpose of reading and writing Latin; I haven’t found anyone nearby who’d like to speak and listen in Latin with me yet. Hopefully my children will reach that point, if I don’t find anyone sooner.

(As a side note, father sitting down and studying something, much like my children do (they are homeschooled), has my oldest son very interested in learning Latin. He’s only five, but even today, as I was doing my drills, he told me, “Daddy, I really want to learn Latin, but I can’t remember all the words!” Fortunately, neither can his father, so I hope that gave him hope. I’m looking forward to starting Latin with him just as soon as he’s comfortable reading in English. He can read now, but I’d like him to get very comfortable reading English before I throw another language into the mix. I’ll probably give it another year, when my own fluency should have advanced to a sufficient point itself.)

This advice will apply to one who knows a little Latin from school; who knows some Latin from the liturgy but nothing of the actual structure of the language; or who knows nothing about Latin at all.

The first piece of advice: you’ll have to spend some money. You won’t have to spend much; many people spend more on hobbies every month, and the money you’ll spend on Latin will last certainly your life, and possibly your children’s, as well. But you will have to put some investment in it. Why? To buy books.

Now, I’m a fairly young man, but it still astounds me that people expect to be able to learn everything about everything just by looking things up on the Internet. People feel sick, look up their symptoms on WebMD, and suddenly their lack of any medical credentials whatsoever counts for nothing. The Internet is fun and all, and there is a lot of valuable information on it, for learning Latin as for most everything else. (We’ll get to some of that shortly.) But back when I was coming up, when someone wanted to learn something, they opened large stacks of paper with words printed on them called books. And honestly, as much as the Internet has to offer, it doesn’t have enough; you’ll need books. You’ll be glad you bought them; the investment is well, well worth it.

So here’s a list of the paper books you’ll need if you seriously want to learn Latin. Devote yourselves to these for fifteen minutes a day, give or take (missing a day won’t kill you, but try to be as regular as possible), and within a year you’ll have at least a decent reading and writing knowledge of Latin. Let’s begin:

Buy Books.

A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin by John F. Collins. This is by far the most important tool in your Latin arsenal. It explains grammatical concepts clearly and concisely; gives a good overview of pronunciation without getting too minute and nitpicky; and includes in each unit a vocabulary list that is about the perfect length for one-session memorization. Most importantly, each unit ends with a set of drills and a set of exercises; the drills require the learner to practice the grammar of the unit to the point that it becomes second nature, while the exercises engage one in translating, mostly from Latin to English but also some English to Latin, a direction usually neglected in textbooks. These translation exercises start with easy made-up sentences, but gradually come to incorporate real-world examples from ecclesiastical texts, and eventually move away from individual sentences into real texts. Do all of these drills and exercises, without exception, even if they seem too easy. They’re not. The practice will be invaluable in making Latin second nature to you. Nothing could be more important to the adult student of Latin than this book. If you get the answer key with it, it’s even cheaper.

Cassell’s New Latin Dictionary by D. P. Simpson or The Bantam New College Latin & English Dictionary by John Traupman. Whichever of these you choose, it will be your constant companion in your studies. You really need one or the other of these; personally, I own both, very old and raggedy copies from all the thumbing and flipping I’ve had to do in them. There’s little, as far as I can see, to recommend one over the other; my edition of Cassell’s is larger and more cumbersome, and my edition of the New College has a superb synopsis of Latin grammar in the beginning section that I’ve often found invaluable. (Indeed, I taught myself most of the grammatical forms out of it at one time, long ago.) But either way, you need at least one of these two. Why these two? Simply, the English to Latin section. Many dictionaries neglect this; yet a Catholic learning Latin must want, at least eventually, to do his own Latin composition, and an English to Latin section will prove extremely valuable in that respect.

Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin by Leo F. Stelten. Other dictionaries are required for other purposes. This one is short, but still an important resource for studying ecclesiastical Latin in particular.

A Latin-English Dictionary of St. Thomas Aquinas by Roy J. DeFerrari. An incredibly valuable resource necessary for anyone delving into the Angelic Doctor (and of course you will be, if you’re studying Church Latin). Sadly, this seems to be out of print, and used copies are expensive. Don’t buy it if you can’t find a decently priced copy, and I won’t include it on the list of prices below. But if you can get your hands on a copy, grab it; you won’t regret it. Honestly, it’s excellent simply as reading material, not merely as a reference; it really is a superb volume.

Latin Grammar by Robert Henle (“Henle,” pronounced “Henley”). This is basically a synopsis of the grammar, and in a pinch you could probably get by without it. But especially once you’ve worked through most of Collins and you need a quick refresher on something (I know I want to use a gerundive here, but how would I do that properly?), Henle would be extremely helpful. And it’s not too expensive, either, so it’s a good resource to have.

So here are the essential volumes for your Latin-learning collection, the kind that are available only on dead trees:

Book	Price ($)
Collins	17.78
Collins, Answer Key	15.25
Cassell’s Dictionary	16.47
or Bantam’s Dictionary	3.44
Stelten’s Dictionary	19.77
Henle’s Grammar	9.50

All these prices are from Amazon; it’s entirely possible you could find better prices elsewhere. And you can probably get combinations of these volumes at good deals. But all told, assuming you get Cassell’s (the higher priced dictionary), you’re only looking at $78.77, not bad for a skill that will enrich your faith, your intellect, and your life for the remainder of your days in this vale of tears.

Use the Internet.

Just because the Internet isn’t the be-all and end-all of research doesn’t mean it’s not useful; I just get tired of people using the phrase “did some research” as synonymous with “Googled it.” There are a great many Latin resources on the Internet; indeed, most of the Latin texts I read (as opposed to learning materials) I get off the Internet. Here I’m talking about learning Latin rather than reading it, so I’ll start with the available textbooks and learning materials. These are legion; the best, in my opinion, are as follows.

A Practical Grammar of the Latin Language, with Perpetual Exercises in Speaking and Writing by G. J. Adler. This book is available entirely online, and it’s well worth the few minutes it takes to download. The answer key is also fully available. The book shows its age—it was originally published in 1858—but it’s fairly unique among available grammars in its emphasis on actual speech. Personally, I’d rely on Collins, above, for the grammar and drills, and rely on Adler for the conversation.

Latinum: The Online Latin Language Audio Course from London. If you’re not annoyed by the classical pronunciation (where “vici” ends up pronounced “wiki”) to the point that you can’t focus, this might be helpful to you, as well. It’s certainly helpful to hear significant quantities of actual spoken Latin, no matter how irritating the pronunciation is. (If you’re blessed enough to have a Latin liturgy nearby, this won’t be an issue; you can also speak Latin aloud to yourself, even if you don’t know the words, to get yourself used to hearing the sounds of the language and telling words apart, noticing word endings, and so on.) Available for free.

Once you’ve gathered together your supplies, here’s what I’ve found to work for me, and I hope will work for you, as well:

Study for at least fifteen minutes per day. More would be great, but try to keep to that minimum. It’s often noted that children learn languages more easily than adults; this is true, but it’s true because children have almost all their time devoted to it, whereas adults rarely get in a consistent period of study. Fifteen minutes a day isn’t too onerous; it’s enough to learn some words, memorize some grammar, and do a few exercises. Half an hour would be even better, and it’s what I aim for; but a minimum of fifteen minutes it pretty indispensable.

Study vocabulary. Grammar is fun, and learning all the rules is important, but you can have memorized every obscure use for the ablative in the world and still understand no Latin if you don’t know actual words. Work hard on the words; make sure a good portion of your daily study is memorizing vocabulary. It can be extremely boring, but it’s vital. A mentor of mine, Father Adrian Harmening, is a Benedictine monk who for decades taught Latin at a Benedictine high school. He told me students always passed their grammar tests, because grammar is comparatively easy; it was vocabulary that universally tripped them up. Work hard on the vocabulary; it’s the most important thing.

Pronounce the Latin out loud. You’ll feel like an idiot, but do it. You’ll gain familiarity with it; you’ll feel more comfortable with it; it’ll help you memorize your forms and words better. And most importantly, it’ll get you used to hearing Latin used in reality and accustom you to separating words out in Latin without thinking about it.

Think in Latin. Easier said than done, I know, but do it anyway. Even if just in little ways; when you get your shoes in the morning, don’t think shoes, think calcei. Don’t sit down to dinner, sit down to cena. Don’t speak to your wife; loquere uxori. An enormous help in this regard is praying in Latin; once again, a Latin liturgy is hugely helpful but not essential here.

Read Latin. By far the most important. Aside from your fifteen minutes of drills per day, read as much Latin as you can. When you’ve put in a couple of months’ study, start reading the daily Mass readings and Gospels in Latin. As you progress, make your pleasure reading Latin. Skip something you’d otherwise read and instead partake of something in the great language of the Church, even if you’re still slow at it and you can only manage a few sentences, or even only one. When you start looking, you’ll start tripping over Latin texts everywhere; some excellent examples follow.

Read the Bible. The Vulgate, specifically the Clementine Vulgate, is surely the most read piece of Latin literature in history. It’s also an excellent example of grammar, both of the classical (in parts) and vulgar (more akin to Church Latin) varieties. (It’s not called the “Vulgate” for nothing.) bibsearch is a Bible program that will produce biblical texts on command, as well as search for them, in Latin and in English, using texts that it took from the Vulsearch project. It works in most free operating systems, like GNU/Linux and the BSDs. For those sadly still trapped by Microsoft, Vulsearch will do the same, in a graphical environment. Connected to the Vulsearch project is the great Clementine text project, to which we all owe an enormous debt of gratitude.

Get words. Not just any words; Whitaker’s Words. This is a phenomenal little program, written initially for Microsoft-based systems but easily recompiled for GNU/Linux (I’ve got a script; ask if you want it), BSD, and other systems, that will be a constant companion in your studies. Enter any word, of whatever grammatical form, and words will obligingly return all possibilities for its grammatical form and meaning, even when either or both is ambiguous (as happens; this is a human language, after all). Binaries for most free operating systems are also available. It’s console-only (that is, you need to type in a window), but it’s very easy to use and has no substitute.

Corpus Thomisticum’s Omnia Opera. This site provides the original texts of everything that St. Thomas Aquinas ever wrote. Really, you can’t get better than that for source material; the Scriptures are more important objectively, and the Vulgate is the only translation without any error, but they are still a translation, and for native ecclesiastical Latin idiom St. Thomas Aquinas knows no equal, unless it be possibly (in linguistic terms only) the next author on the list.

S. Aurelii Augustini Opera Omnia. The complete works of St. Aurelius Augustinus, usually known in English as St. Augustine. This is hard Latin, borderline classical in its construction, with an enormous vocabulary to draw from and delighting in intricate and unusual constructions. Good for advanced work, or even intermediate work if you know your grammar and are looking for ways to test it.

So what are you waiting for? Get to it! Learning to at least read Latin will open doors to all the great richness of the Catholic tradition. It’s hard to think of a better way to spend fifteen minutes a day.

Praise be to Christ the King!

“Artificial Life”—No Problem for Thomists

A lot of atheists have been exuding a lot of glee about the alleged creation of artificial life. Surely this finally beats the hated theism to death, doesn’t it? How can they maintain that God was necessary to create life when man has just done so all by himself?

First of all, whether this is really “creating life” is a bit dubious, though it’s certainly an immense scientific achievement. As Mark Shea just pointed out, “The [u]niverse [j]ust [c]hanged and [n]obody [n]oticed.” But to cut through all the hype, what’s really been done here is that the researched artificially copied an already existing, natural genome; took the genome out of a different species of cell; and put their artificial copy into that other cell. The cell species literally became the genome species once this was done. That’s fascinating and amazing, but I’m not really sure where life was created in the process.

But for this discussion, let’s just assume that life was created, whole-cloth, by these researchers, by which I mean that they took dead material and worked their science on it and it became alive by some process not active in nature. What of it? Why should this dampen our faith in a creator God? Thomists, the most consistent school of those who believe in such a God, have no problem with this possibility because they understand the concept of the substance.

Substance is a word coming from the Latin substare, which means “to stand under”. Life forms, in particular, all have a substance. The substance is not material; it’s not something that you can cut out of a creature. Essentially, the reasoning is as follows:

All things change. But these things change while still remaining the same thing. For example, my body has no cells now that it had when it was in its infancy. Yet no one would deny that my body is still the same thing that it was back then. It’s changed, certainly, but it hasn’t changed what it is. We recognize it as being the same thing. It has the same identity. One could quite reasonably point at my infant body and call it me, while also pointing at my current body and calling it me; indeed, it’s hard to imagine doing anything else. This is because the two are the same thing. It’s not just a linguistic convention; they are really the same thing, and our linguistic conventions simply reflect that.

Yet no material part of them is the same. I can’t take a chunk of each one, point to it, and say, “This is the same matter in both bodies.” There is no such piece of material. Therefore, there is something underlying the matter, something “standing under” it, which makes it the same thing. That something we call the substance or, sometimes, form.

Materialists scoff at this. They will argue that when we refer to these two things as the same, we’re just making reality easier for us to think about; in reality, they are different things precisely because their physical matter is different. But there is no reason to believe that matter is the sole component of existence, and substantial reason to believe otherwise, though that reasoning is beyond the scope of this little article. In any case, we are arguing why a theist, arguing from a theist’s first principles, won’t be bothered by this particular scientific feat, not why a materialist from his first principles isn’t. So for now, we will leave it at this and proceed.

That “substance,” in man, is called simply the soul, specifically the rational soul. In man, it is spiritual; that is, independent from matter. We know that it is spiritual because it has spiritual powers, specifically the power of reason. But nobody’s talked here about creating a man, only some form of life. So what about the substance of some species of protist?

That substance is also called the soul; however, it is not a spiritual soul. We know that it’s not because the protist has no powers which are indicative of spirituality. It’s incapable of reason, most specifically, and its actions are entirely governed by its matter (as this experiment tends to prove). Rather, its soul is simply its substance; it’s what makes this creature what it is, rather than something else. To avoid confusion, I won’t use the word “soul” for it anymore, and simply call it the creature’s substance or form. But the principle is the same; the form is what makes it this particular type of thing, rather than something else.

So what gives rise to the form? In man, who has a spiritual form, God directly creates the soul. But in lesser animals, plants, bacteria, and protists, God does not directly create the soul. It is not necessary for Him to do so; the soul is dependent upon the matter. When a man dies, his soul leaves his body, it doesn’t cease to exist; that’s because it’s spiritual and is totally independent of the matter (the body) which it’s informing. When a protist dies, on the other hand, its form simply stops; it no longer exists at all. What we have is no longer a protist, but simply the bits of matter that used to be a protist. The protist is, truly and simply, dead. The form of the protist is dependent upon having suitable matter which it can inform; if the matter is not suitable, for whatever reason, the form cannot exist in it, and therefore doesn’t.

Similarly, when the matter is suitable for the form to exist, the form does exist. Thomists say that the form arises from the potency of the matter; that is, when matter of the proper type is so arranged as to be the proper sort for a form, that form arises. Thus, when a cell undergoes mitosis (when it splits), the new cell that splits off from the old one has its matter appropriately arranged for the form of that same species. That form then arises, and there are now two protists of that species present. In the same way, when an animal (say, a dog) conceives, the seed of the male (scientifically, the sperm) and the egg of the female come together and become matter which is suitable for an embryonic dog. The form of the dog then arises. From that moment, until the moment the dog dies, the same form is informing that matter, even if the matter is completely recycled several times over (as science tells us that it is). Then, when the dog dies, it dies precisely because some part of its matter has decayed so seriously, whether from injury, sickness, or simply overuse (which we call “old age”), that the matter is no longer suitable for the form of a dog. That dog then dies, and the form ceases to exist.

But isn’t this non-falsifiable? Scientists pride themselves on proposing theories that are falsifiable; that is, that can be proven or disproven by empirical experiments. This means that a theory can be tested and confirmed or disproven by others. In that sense, no, this explanation of reality is not non-falsifiable; it could be proven wrong in a number of ways. One who disagrees with it could show that it’s internally inconsistent; that it doesn’t match observed evidence; that it doesn’t properly answer objections made against it by other schools of thought. Materialists, on the other hand, often object to it with statements that are non-falsifiable, such as “the soul doesn’t exist” or “matter is the only thing that exists.” Really? Prove it, by scientific experiments. The fact is that all they can prove is that non-material things can’t be measured, which is something we already knew. Again, first principles are beyond the scope of this article, but it’s clear that this philosophical explanation of life is at the very least just as valid as any other.

So what’s happened in this experiment? All that’s happened is that the scientists have jiggled with the matter of one bacteria such that it’s no longer suitable for its original species—an easy thing to do, which we typically call “killing”—but is suitable for another species (a much more difficult matter only now accomplished). They did this by transplanting the DNA, which our science makes clear is the single most important material component of a thing, of one species into the cell of a different species after removing that species’s own DNA. A fantastic feat, to be sure. But nothing that should give any theist pause.

Whether doing this sort of thing is a good idea is, of course, a different question. But it doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination disprove the existence of a creator God, Who created all things and keeps them in existence. When scientists have created a living bacterium from scratch, where previously nothing, not even nonliving matter, had existed, then theists will have to worry. But given that creation ex nihilo is impossible for anyone other than God, I’m not holding my breath in concern.

Praise be to Christ the King!

Behavior and Identity

The response always comes whenever discussing sodomy, which we now euphemistically call homosexuality. “But it’s part of their identity! You’re asking them to deny their identity! How can they live a lie?”

It sounds very compelling. It is, after all, an appeal to what modernity holds most sacred: individuality, bringing to mind Polonius’s long monologue in Hamlet:

And this above all: to thine own self be true;
And it shall follow, as the night the day,
That thou canst not be false to any man.

Really, this sounds brilliant, an unanswerable argument to those who would force the “gays” among us to live lies and deny their true selves. It’s too bad that it’s the argumentative equivalent of horse feces. Indeed, it’s even less beneficial; horse feces is at least useful, while this particular pile of piffle serves only to obfuscate and confuse.

At root is the question of identity; namely, what is it? Identity is who we are. There are many, many factors that go into making us who we are; our families first and foremost, our ancestors, our place, our education, our friends. And certainly our sexual behavior is part of that. These factors have varying degrees of influence on various people; for myself, my father was a huge influence on who I am, while for others the mother was a larger influence. And, of course, some people totally reject their families and form themselves entirely on the influence of other factors. It depends upon the person himself.

And therein, of course, lies the rub: people accept or reject that influence as they will. My father taught me that men don’t cry (though reputedly he did cry, once, when his mother died); as a result, I don’t cry. (I’ll admit I’ve come pretty close at times.) I didn’t even cry when my father died, dear as he was to me, because he taught me that men should appear strong at all times. This is part of who I am. But could I decide to cry? Could I reject this influence of my father and start bawling like a baby every time I stub my toe?

Yes. These factors influence identity, they do not determine it. We can accept, reject, or mitigate their influence exactly as we will. Doing so may or may not be a wise decision, but it’s still a decision, a decision that lies within the self.

So let’s say I did reject this lesson of my father. Let’s say, when he died, that I wept like a willow after a storm. Would I be living a lie? Or would I just be deciding that my father was wrong about something and acting out that decision?

But that’s different, cries the protagonist of sodomy. You don’t really want to hold your tears in; you’re just doing it because of what you were taught. What you want to do is to cry. That’s who you really are, because that’s what your heart of hearts is leading you to do. So really you’re living a lie by not crying; you’re denying your true self under the influence of your family.

How many poor, innocent “gay” people have endured this suffering? How many have, in their deepest selves, desired sexual relations with those of their own sex, but denied their deepest selves because of what they were taught? They were forced, by others around them, to live a lie, to deny their own identities. This is wrong; we should let such people embrace their sodomy, and smile and applaud them when they do. That’s the only way they can live out who they truly are.

And here’s the real rub. Proponents of sodomy aren’t talking about sodomite identity; they’re talking about sodomite desires. “Gay” people desire sodomy; therefore, it’s part of who they are to practice sodomy. Modernity is obsessed with desire and its fulfillment, preferably as immediately as possible; it has thus equated such desires with identity, and the denial of such desires with the denial of the very self.

But one might as well say that I’m denying my identity, that I’m “living a lie” when I decide not to eat another chocolate-covered cherry because I’ve already had enough. It’s my desire; I really want another chocolate-covered cherry. They’re delicious, after all, and I enjoy them immensely. And I like dark chocolate around them, not milk chocolate. But the fact of the matter is that, regardless of what I desire internally, I’m faced with a choice: I can eat a dark-chocolate-covered cherry, a milk-chocolate-covered cherry, or (God forbid!) deny my desire entirely and eat neither. It’s my choice. I’m not living a lie no matter which choice I make; I’m just evaluating my options and selecting one based on whatever standards I choose to apply.

So with sodomy. A man may really, really want to engage in sodomy. His passions may draw him quite powerfully to it. Similarly, a married man’s passions may draw him quite powerfully to a woman who is not his wife. But the second man is not denying his identity when he restrains his urges and remains faithful to his wife; nor is the first man living a lie when he restrains his urges and restricts his behavior to what is natural and good. They both are, in fact, forming their identities; specifically, they are building their characters, instilling in themselves habits of correct moral behavior. They are making rational choices to do rational things for a rational end. They are most decidedly not “living a lie.”

Let us not accept modernity’s ridiculous association of internal desires with personal identity. May God help us recognize that we form our own characters, begging Him for help and assistance; and may He grant us that assistance through Christ Our Lord and by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Amen.

Praise be to Christ the King!

The Glories of the Western Rite, Part I: Introduction

Most Catholics, including most Westerners, are mostly or even totally ignorant of their own rite. The reasons for this ignorance are multiple; the most important, I think, are as follows:

• The destruction of the traditional Roman rite, and its replacement by another, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Novus Ordo Missae, the rite of Mass that most Western Catholics know and experience today, may carry the same name as the traditional Roman rite, but it’s a fundamentally different thing. It has abandoned so many of the basic characteristics of the traditional Roman rite—Latin language, long periods of silence, a largely invariable canon, even celebration facing the East, which all liturgies throughout the world have always had in common—make it clearly simply a different rite, even if it’s practiced in the same areas under the same bishops. This destruction of the traditional Roman rite eliminated so many of the liturgical traditions of the West that it’s unsurprising that the nonliturgical traditions of the West have also been left by the wayside.
• The mainstreaming of Catholicism in the West. For centuries Catholics were seen as fringe, even in most so-called Catholic countries. Take America as an example. Catholics were largely pariahs; there was even a political party whose primary plank was hatred of Catholics. The Ku Klux Klan felt obliged to add Catholics to their list of people who don’t belong in their communities (along with blacks and Jews). Then President Kennedy was elected; Kennedy was far from a good Catholic in his personal or political life, but his election made Catholics seem normal. This resulted in the assimilation of Catholics into the larger society; having lost our distinctiveness among the population, we stopped studying and desiring it in our religion.

Whatever the reasons, however, we as Westerners no longer know our own traditions. This is a sad situation which it should be the enthusiastic honor of every Roman Catholic to help remedy.

This series will attempt to help address this miserable state. Beginning with the very beginning, the basic elements the make up the place of the Mass, we will proceed through the arrangements and decoration of the altar, to the vestments of the priest, to the prayers at the foot of the altar, and so on, giving a brief but thorough explanation of its meaning and symbolism. This will be a basic explanation of the parts of the Mass and their symbolic meaning, and it will take no account of the variations that these parts have depending upon particular feasts and parts of the year.

We will then proceed to the parts of the year, explaining the variations in the liturgy that come with those times and the other traditions associated with them. Finally, we will explore the other sacraments, explaining the liturgical and nonliturgical traditions that surround them.

I hope my readers will add to and correct these parts as they emerge, to further enlighten both myself and the others in the world who have the good fortune to belong to the most ancient and venerable rite in Christendom. May Jesus Christ, to Whom every action in the liturgy of all rites is directed, guide us in the right path in this study.

Praise be to Christ the King!