The Sheepcat

A Little Housecleaning Regarding that "Catholicism" Blog Category

When I started this blog eleven months ago, I was thinking pretty seriously about Catholicism, wondering whether I might actually convert, but it wasn't a foregone conclusion. Since then, of course, I crossed the Tiber in September, and the blog has naturally changed focus. Though I do still post zany stuff with no detectable theological content, most everything here reflects a growing Catholic sensibility, so for some time now it hasn't really made sense to group posts under the category "Catholicism."

When I'm earning a living, I write (among other things) back-of-the-book indexes, and Catholicism has become  for this blog what's known in the indexing trade as the "metatopic." Do Mi Stauber explains,

The metatopic is the structural center of the index: every single heading you create will be implicitly related to it.

And there's precious little information value in a blog category that includes virtually every post. So I'm officially retiring the "Catholicism" category and will be instituting some finer-grained alternatives-- maybe doctrine and teaching, liturgy, priesthood, saints, devotions,… we'll see.

The Pilgrims Assemble

We pilgrims had our orientation meeting tonight at Holy Family. Here Halina from Queen Syrena Travel Inc explains some basic information before handing out our green travel folders containing our airline tickets and itineraries.

I got a special thrill when Halina talked about the Shrine of the Black Madonna. I can't really explain it--I just know I'm looking forward especially to seeing the painting, which legend attributes to St Luke, though it looks Byzantine enough to me.

We learned a little bit about the countries we'll be visiting--how, for example, Masses are better attended in Poland than in Hungary or the Czech Republic. Mostly we heard about practical details: luggage allowances, changing currency, weather, clothing, and so forth.

Fr David Roche of the Oratory of St Philip Neri will be our tour guide. Here he talks with one of the pilgrims, with whom I also spoke briefly. We have a large group, 43 people, I believe, almost all from the Greater Toronto area, including a contingent of maybe 8 or 10 from Holy Family Church itself.

Someone asked whether Internet cafés would be available en route. Apparently so, at least in the larger cities. I hope to be able to upload some pictures and write a few posts while we're over there. Just over a month before we leave …

Da Vinci Roundup

Barbara Nicolosi says "Thanks, but no thanks" to "dialogue" with The Da Vinci Code, and she offers an alternative that will speak to Sony Pictures in apparently the only language Sony understands: money.

The answer is to go to the movies on May 19, 2006. Every Christian who loves Jesus: your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to buy movie tickets. We need to bring our kids, our church groups, our youth ministry clubs, our seniors groups--and buy tickets for the homeless for after we feed them. And we all need to go to see THIS!

I can't participate directly, because I'll be out of the country, but I just love the idea. Go see Over the Hedge! See it twice!

Meanwhile, Eric Metaxas gives us "Screwtape On The DaVinci Code," based of course on C. S. Lewis's sly demon.

My dear Wormwood, here is a book (and soon, a movie!) filled with such a precariously towering heap of our very best non-thinking that it is quite dizzying! It has the potential to mislead, confuse, and vex millions! Its name? The DaVinci Code.

Brilliant.

Update: Welcome, visitors from CaNN. Do please take a look around the blog, and if you're in the Toronto area on the weekend of April 28–30, don't miss the testimony my Zacchaeus Fellowship friends and I will be giving about how Christ's love led us away from acting on our same-sex desires.

Objections to Marian Dogma?

Over at Titus One Nine are some very stimulating discussions of reservations that very many Protestants (and more than a few "cafeteria Catholics") have toward the Catholic dogmas of the Assumption of Mary and the Immaculate Conception. (Also at Pontifications.) Some highlights:

The main theological point about Mariology is simple enough but seems to be curiously unmarked in most discussions: the Marian doctrines point up how Mary is always and pre-eminently what every disciple is called to be (#122).

* * *

I believe if more evangelical Protestants were to approach Marian devotion with an open mind (and an even more open heart), they would find that their fears are unfounded. For Mary leads us to Jesus - not to herself. This is the essence of the motto “Ad Jesum Per Mariam” - It is not “Ad Mariam per Jesum”! Can one be a good Christian without being devoted to Mary? Of course! However, an even better question is this: Can one be a good Christian without loving Jesus completely and totally? Of course not. And if we were to ask who, among all those who knew Him, who had the greatest love for Him, the answer is obvious - His mother. The more we honor her in song and devotion, the more we are reminded of her love for Him. This is the heart of the matter (#24).

* * *

John Henry Newman, … whose knowledge of the early Church was rivalled by few, had no problem declaring: 

“I fully grant that devotion towards the Blessed Virgin has increased among Catholics with the progress of centuries; I do not allow that the doctrine concerning her has undergone a growth, for I believe that it has been in substance one and the same from the beginning” (#134).

* * *

I finally felt myself drawn to Catholicism, but the Marian hurdle proved to be most difficult to overcome.

I can only share my testimony. Having admitted to myself that I was being drawn towards Catholicism, I earnestly prayed about my difficulties. Specifically, I prayed: “Lord, she is your Mother. I don’t know whether the Catholic Church is right to emphasize her so, but I only ask that you give me a love for her that mirrors your own. I want to love her as you love her - neither more nor less.”

That is still my prayer. And He has answered it. My appreciation of Mary’s faith, hope, and love has grown considerably. I have come to see her in an entirely new light, as the exemplar of Christian faith and discipleship. And my love for her, and devotion to her, as become central to my spirituality.

Does this detract from my devotion to her Divine son in any way? No - in a way that is hard to describe to those on the outside, it has deepened it. Mary constantly draws us closer to Christ (#59).

I found Scott Hahn's Hail, Holy Queen a good introduction to Marian doctrine. Someday I'll have to read Hugo Rahner's Our Lady and the Church, which has been highly recommended as a profound theological reflection upon the Blessed Virgin.

So Much for Travelling to Eastern Europe

I've been preparing to go on a pilgrimage in May to Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Austria, so I started to read George Weigel's Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II. One remark stopped me in my tracks.

A rhetorical convention, Stalinist in origin but widespread in the West, assigns Poland to "eastern Europe." Poles never speak of themselves this way. Poland, for Poles, is in central Europe, and any map of Europe will quickly confirm their claim. For Poles, though, this sense of being in the center of Europe is a matter of history and culture as well as of geography.

To be sure, Poland is a Slavic nation, speaking a Slavic language. But the fact that Poles use the Latin, rather than the Cyrillic, alphabet in writing their language is more than an orthographic curiosity. It tells us how to locate the axis of Polish culture.

I've known since I was in grade school that Poland had strong ties to France, thanks to a biography of Marie Curie, and I've also been reading Michael O'Brien's Sophia House. Anyway, I've stopped telling people I'm travelling to "Eastern Europe" in May. I've begun a new category for posts on the topic.

Fr. Roche from the Oratory is leading the pilgrimage, and we have our orientation meeting next Wednesday, with a full itinerary. Watch this space.

Lent--New, Improved, Penitence-Free

Pontifications looks at The Sin of Authenticity. With links to the stunning homily that started it all. Mark Shea's got it right: "Boston Jesuits move deep into the realms of self-parody."

Victorian Charity

Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb examines Welfare and Charity: Lessons from Victorian England.

The great Victorian philanthropists were not Rockefellers or Carnegies who gave of their fortunes for worthy causes. This was not check-book philanthropy. Nor was it what Dickens and George Eliot satirized as "telescopic philanthropy" — the charity that "increases directly as the square of the distance," like that of Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House, who was more concerned with the natives of Borrioboola-Gha than with her own children. The Victorians gave what they could by way of money, but more important, they gave of themselves, with their personal, sustained involvement in their work and their direct and immediate concern for those whom they were assisting.

This is a fitting practical case study for thinking through the implications of Benedict XVI's encyclical on love, Deus Caritas Est, which calls for charity in its fullest sense.

Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable.[20] The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. The Church is one of those living forces: she is alive with the love enkindled by the Spirit of Christ. This love does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support. In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live “by bread alone” (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)—a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human.

Kid in a Candy Store

MO-O-OM!
I don' feel too good.

That's the trouble with overdosing on anything, whether it's Christmas candy or blogs. I've been spending so much time reading blogs lately, I have a virtual tummyache. (Or maybe I'm coming down with a chronic bellyache?) So let's see if I can exercise a little discipline, now that I've realized a little more clearly that there's really no way in the world I can keep up with all the interesting blogs that are out there, so I have to be a bit more selective.

And in the meantime, maybe it'd help to spend a little more time with Mother Mary. I remember how cheerful I was to be received into the Church, and while I have my reasons for feeling a little less chipper lately, surely one of them is that my time praying the rosary has slipped from its summer plateau. Well, I'm getting back to it now as well as getting a good workout at the pool more often, so may this help me "rejoice in the Lord always."

Aesthetics Blog

As someone who was drawn to Catholicism partly through traditional sacred music, I'm delighted to find the new Hieronymus Blog, devoted to "Art : History : Culture : Liturgy : Architecture : Devotion : Literature : Music : Grammar : Penmanship." In one of his introductory posts, he explains,

Some will [claim] that morality and aesthetics are unconnected. Indeed, bad taste is not a mortal sin. However, a depraved conscience that calls goodness evil and evil goodness and a depraved aesthetic that calls ugliness beauty and beauty ugliness are often symptoms of the same insanity.

For a contemporary example, morally conservative and doctrinally orthodox Catholicism correlates strongly to a preference for certain liturgical music, art and architecture; morally dissolute and doctrinally heterodox Catholicism correlates to an opposite preference. No unbreakable connection between the correlated opinions exists, and exceptions abound. However, both are informed by the same lurking factors. In the latter example, a progressivist view of history that falsely considers rejection of the past an indication of maturity, a discomfort with the divinity of Christ and its implications, and a rejection of belief in objective truth similarly misform both the conscience and the aesthetic.

I also like the way this traditionalist plans to focus on what is good and beatiful, and refrain from complaining. Link via Amy Welborn.

Catholic Blogs of Note

How could I not be impressed by Therese Z? In the face of another comboxer's hostile misreading of her remarks on marriage over at Sed Contra, she responded unflappably,

As a Catholic woman, I find the Christian understanding of the sacramentality of marriage, and the sexual expression within it, to be unbelievably liberating. God's Plan for me is protected by the Church's teachings, and I found my dignity and even some measure of beauty as a Catholic woman.

The rest I owe to careful dressing, daily moisturizing and good manicures every couple of months....

So I had to check out her blog, Exultet, which she actually shares with another blogger, named Rosalind. I found their blog every bit as lively as I had hoped. And anyone who loves "Handel,... tortured [Russian composers], klezmer" and British mysteries can't be all bad.

Now, at the risk of reinforcing some unfortunate stereotypes about the fashion consciousness of us men with some degree of same-sex inclinations (really, you should see the state of some of the things I wear), I'll quote a bit of Therese's remarks about Gaudete Sunday.

The priest should (although some, sadly, don't) wear rose-colored vestments on Gaudete and Laudete Sundays. Our parish's only set of rose vestments veers, no, crashes heavily into powder room pink and are quite forcefully ugly in pattern, too, so only the bravest priest puts them on, the others opting instead for white or gold.

The rose vestments at Holy Family, I am happy to report, are quite easy on the eye. This whole idea of Advent as a penitential season is quite new to me, by the way. My old Baptist church didn't observe Advent per se at all, and before that I was used to Advent as an early beginning to Christmas celebrations. Preparatory, yes; penitential, nah, not really.

The Curt Jester also led me to the powerful story of the martyrdom of the blog's patron saint, Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J. (You wouldn't know from the rather sombre-looking image that Fr. Pro was known as God's Jester.)

Also Albertus Minimus is worth mentioning again for his list of Catholic blogs outside the United States, a list in which he has been kind enough to list The Sheepcat.