Peace of Mind

 From The Missive:

Our Lord’s first appearance to the Apostles manifests these two elements of the one true Church: Christ stands triumphant amidst this motley crew of failures and the word Peace rings out. Breathing upon them, He then says Receive ye the Holy Ghost, giving them all the real power to forgive sins; that is, to restore a soul to grace and establish peace within it, a power continued in the Church through Confession until the end of the world. And it is noteworthy that the word for breath is the same as when God breathed life into Adam – both these instances deal with a life established by and rooted in God.

Therefore, in this first meeting of the Risen Lord with His Apostles do we see the harmonization of the Church’s doctrine and morality: the belief required in the absolute truth of Christ’s teachings and commandments as indicated in the presence of the risen Lord, the conduct of life demanded from belief in those teaching as indicated by the power to forgive sin, thus the establishing of a complete and perfect order for a plan of true peace.

It should be no wonder then that the response for one who claims belief in Christ must be a true interior assent to all the Church proposes for belief as summed up in the Creed, together with a loving submission to the Church’s lawful moral authority which alone has its origin in Christ. No one has any authority to isolate any teaching of Christ and then say peace can be based upon that alone. (Read more.)

The Future of the Liturgy

From The Missive:

We attend the Latin Mass because it is, to us, where Holy Mother Church feels most alive and most like Herself: a wise Mater et Magistra unaffected by passing fads and cheap, trendy gimmicks but beautiful and wonderful and complicated as life itself.

I am not a child or young person, so I’m not sure how I would fare under Fr. Reese’s proposal. But I suspect he wouldn’t appreciate that my registering at an FSSP parish is not out of nostalgia. I was born in the early 1970s after the liturgical change. I have no memory whatsoever of the traditional Mass. In fact, I was initially quite resistant to it and once argued the superiority of the new liturgy to my future wife–quite unsuccessfully, I might add.

My love for the Mass of the Ages came by lived experience, by attending it and then sorting out in my own mind whether the Missal of 1962 or the Missal of 1970 was best suited to my Catholic life.  Nor am I the only one that had this transformative experience; at every traditional community one will find people and families who could tell very similar stories.

We laity of the traditional movement have gotten used to being the black sheep of the larger Catholic world. On a personal level that may be a frustrating space to inhabit, yes, but it seems a small price to pay for the spiritual treasures we have discovered in our parishes. Think us weird all you like–just let us sing the Asperges and sit in quiet reverence during the Roman Canon.

Apparently, though, the “live and let live” philosophy we hear bandied about ad nauseam nowadays can’t quite suffer us to continue existing.

To some, we are more than an oddity: we are a constant irritation. It is not enough that many traditionalists are walled off into dedicated liturgical ghettos, separated from our fellow Catholics by whispers, suspicions, and distrust of those crazy people who go that church. It is not enough that we have, effectively, a grand total of 3 FSSP parishes that can adequately serve us in the entirety of eastern Pennsylvania–and we’re even lucky to have that many.

Apparently, the ghettos need to be dismantled, and the 3 parishes need to be zero.

Perhaps Fr. Reese is not aware of the depth of the laity’s commitment to the traditional liturgy. So let me state it quite directly. As for my wife and I, we plan on attending the traditional Latin Mass until we lie in repose under the solemn tones of the Requiem and the Dies Irae. Moreover, as long as our own “children and young people” are under our parental care, they will be at every Latin Mass with us: serving at the altar, wearing veils, and learning the language that is their liturgical birthright and that my wife is diligently teaching them. I am not sure why anyone thinks they are capable of not “allowing” my children to do all this. But as an indication of our familial resolve, permit me to quote another character from the Narnia series:

“My own plans are made….While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world into some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.”

(Read more.)

The Song of Bernadette (1943)

The Song of Bernadette is one of my favorite films. The bleak poverty, the depth of winter, the chilling remoteness of the Pyrenean village are captured magnificently, so that Lourdes appears as the most unlikely spot for miracles that would shake the world. There are few more majestic moments in cinema than when the dying baby is plunged into the newly dug spring at the grotto of Massabielle, to come forth with a hearty, healthy cry. (Such a miracle did happen at Lourdes. I always cry at that scene.) Jennifer Jones becomes St. Bernadette; she resembles her a great deal, other than the divergence in height. The tall Jennifer communicates quite masterfully the littleness of the petite Bernadette, as well as her purity and simplicity. Charles Bickford's portrayal of the crusty, skeptical Abbé Peyramale, who becomes Bernadette's indefatigable champion, inspired me to visit the Abbé's tomb in the crypt of the parish church of Lourdes. The Abbé died two years before Bernadette, and so was not at her deathbed as shown in the movie.

The film was based upon the novel by Franz Werfel, one of the greatest Catholic novels written by a non-Catholic. When Werfel, who was Jewish, was escaping the Nazis, he and his wife (the notorious Alma Mahler) stopped in Lourdes on their way to Spain. Werfel found a great deal of spiritual consolation in Lourdes, and promised the long dead Bernadette that he would write down her story. The novel and film romanticize some aspects of Bernadette's life; a few historical liberties are taken. But the portrayal of Bernadette and her family, particularly her horrified parents, already overwhelmed by trials, is fairly accurate, as is the recounting of the amazing events at the grotto.

Remarkably, both the book and film emphasize that it was not the apparitions that made Bernadette into a saint. Rather, it was how she accepted the trials sent by God, from the humiliations in the convent to the debilitating and agonizing health problems that killed her. In the final scene, the faith of a dying nun illuminates a darkening world. I rejoice that her moment of light is artistically captured on film for posterity.