A Good Name

 

You may or may not have noticed some drama in the Catholic, Inc. world lately over who can or should speak publicly at which events and with whom they associate themselves with (if not, Eric Sammons can give you some background here). There are a lot of big and medium names either hopping on or pulling out of certain events on the circuit; for those who have discerned for whatever reason to withdraw from certain engagements, you have Tim Gordon calling on Twitter to "shame the cowards" and replace them with "high-T chads" (whatever that is), while Patrick Coffin is threatening to sue for libel those who take it upon themselves to raise red flags about his views. You're either a "spineless coward" or a "brave truth-teller." There is no in between. 

I generally don't make a thing of attending Catholic conferences (especially "on-line only" ones). One exception was driving to Detroit a few years ago to attend a Street Evangelization conference. I mostly wanted to connect with others like myself involved in this apostolate to "talk shop" and make contacts in this work. It was also nice to finally get to tell Dr. Janet E. Smith in person after her talk that "You are the reason why we have our youngest child." (she smiled and said she never gets tired of having people tell her that).  I found her character relatable, since she seems to have an open mind and is amenable to changing her position when it needs to be reformulated based on new evidence. She's also very funny, and a sense of humor is always a good sign when I interact with anyone.  

It can't be easy to be a big name in the Catholic world, as you have to walk a tightrope a lot of times, and your daily bread is baked in the oven of your personal faith. I wrote about this in Don't Quit Your Day Job. I think God in His mercy has spared me from making any money or getting any notoriety in the Catholic (TM) world. 

This whole ordeal brought me back to the story of the revered Orthodox saint Nektarios, whose life and story is recounted in the excellent film Man of God (2021). Nektarios was passed over as Patriarch because he was not politically astute, gave all his alms to the poor, and lived a virtuous life. His good name was slandered, and he was essentially exiled to work on a remote island. He did not attempt to correct or repudiate the claims, but endured them and often did his charitable works in secret. 

The thing that struck me about Nektarios as a man of God was his dispassion--not in the stoic sense, but along the lines of detachment. He is unconcerned about his reputation or good name (there is a great scene where one of his spiritual sisters/nuns pleads with him, "why don't you SAY SOMETHING?" when he is being calumniated and he puts his finger to his lips and points skyward in silence). As Catholics (especially as Catholic men), emotive responses (anger, worry, jealousy) come from a lower appetite, and although we are not stoics who see emotion or passion as negative in and of themselves, we must in the Augustinian sense have control over them as a matter of temperance. The man who has no self-control is not a detached man. I for one have a lot of work to do!

Dispassion (or rather, a detachment from the passions) does not mean we do not think hard or love deeply. It means we are in control of our emotions and do not act reflexively. It means we answer to One, who is God, and recognize that He is the one who renders our ultimate judgment. It also means we live with the possibility of enduring misrepresentations of those who have something against us, but that we do not return the action as a matter of Christian charity. This is all the exercise of virtue for the One who sees in secret. 

I have never been invited to speak at a Catholic conference anywhere, so this is not really my dumpster fire to be concerned about--I'm simply observing the smoke. I do think if someone believes in the message of a conference, and are willing to endure whatever fallout comes from it by way of the peanut gallery, they should speak. But also, if they've discerned not to, they shouldn't be "counter-canceled" as a "spineless coward." It's also unfortunate this drama clouds over what has the potential to be a sharing of wisdom and hope, even if you have to sift through some fringe stuff to get there. 

But can we live the life of a Christian without these conferences? Yes, we most certainly can. For those who speak, it is a platform and some monetary compensation. For the attendees, one would hope they would grow in faith, hope, and love so as to live better lives as disciples.  But is it true? It is beautiful? Is it necessary? I'm not sure if it is. 

So, besides a quick prayer for those caught up in the lose/lose situation of having to discern whether or not to attend these various conferences, I will lay the topic to rest. There's a lot of work to be done!

Make Room For Mystery

 Because my journey to Christ has come by way of influence from both the East and the West--both inside and outside the Church--I have a bit of a "Tex-Mex" spirituality. My first experience of Catholicism was in the Eastern-rite of the Church, attending the Divine Liturgy with my father from time to time when he would go. I experienced liturgical plainsong (chant), sometimes known as prostopinije, incense, iconography and iconostasis, and a sense of the sacred. When I came into the Church and received the Sacred Mysteries (Sacraments) of Confirmation, Confession, and Holy Eucharist, it was by way of the Byzantine Rite. On the way to a monastery in New Mexico after a year of being a Catholic I sat next to an Orthodox priest on the plane and he gifted me a prayer rope on which to pray the Jesus Prayer which is a hallmark of Orthodox spirituality. It's simple and meditative: with each breath in, you pray Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God...and with each breath out, "be merciful to me a sinner" on each bead. Whereas rosary beads are generally of a hard, solid material, even the beads of a Orthodox prayer rope themselves are made from cloth, so have a flexible dexterity reflective of Orthodox spirituality. I prayed the Jesus prayer with that prayer rope for many years, and later discovered the classic The Way of the Pilgrim which recounts one Russian peasant's experience of the Jesus prayer in his quest to learn to "pray without ceasing," as St. Paul encourages us to do.

One thing I think the Church of the East is more comfortable with in general is the sense of mystery. Not that this doesn't exist in the Latin Church or in the mystical theology of the Western saints, but the influence of scholasticism and neo-scholasticism in the West was so formative to the Latin Church that this kind of mystical and liturgical fluidity can be a different experience for those who experience a Byzantine (or even Orthodox) liturgy for the first time. 

Of course, we have been attending the Tridentine Mass for the past three years now--neither the Divine Liturgy of the East or the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the Latin Church is especially foreign or novel to us at this point. When my son serves mass and I observe his movements and those of the altar servers, I can see they reflect this scholastic influence in liturgical physicality--movements and transitions are crisp and clearly defined, with sometimes military precision. Contrast this in observation with the way a Byzantine or Orthodox priest and congregants bless themselves (thrice, right to left)--there is a rounded fluidity to the movements from head to navel to shoulders, almost like an oval in motion rather than a perfectly delineated cross. I think in the context of liturgy, this may reflect the greater comfort with which the East "sits in mystery" rather than having to tie up and resolve it and assign it to its appropriate clearly defined box. 

For those who have come to Tradition by way of the Latin Mass, there can be a kind of 'tunnel vision' in mindset that liturgical integrity must be invested in this kind of Western scholastic expression in the expression of its physicality in the liturgy. The Latin Mass may sometimes feel like the "article-objection-reply" format of the Summa in liturgical form, leaving no rock of objection unturned or corner rounded. 

It can also be reflected in spiritual practice of those in the Eastern and Western traditions. Mystery is not always a comfortable place to be for the scholastic mind. We are comfortable with checking the boxes--morning offering, mass, rosary, divine office, etc. The temptation to "figure things out" and have everything in its preassigned box can sometimes rob us of the experience of the mystical. I don't know enough about traditionalist Catholics to know what defines their spirituality. I try to have some structure to my prayer life but for myself, I have always been comfortable with the idea of mystery and was also never especially drawn to Thomistic scholasticism as a way to understand and experience God. 

Of course this is just general observation and not meant to put one above the other. Certainly the sense of mystery transcends East and West, and no one tradition can hold exclusive claim to it. When we pray the rosary, ideally we enter into the MYSTERIES of the rosary and meditate on them. We pray with our heart as well as our head and lips and fingers. The heart is where mystery roots itself. And the heart can sometimes be messy, not clearly delineated and defined. Mary "keep all these things in her heart" at the Annunciation (Lk 2:19) and "wisdom enters the heart," as scripture says (Prov 2:10)

I like Tex-Mex. I like Asian Fusion. I like the Divine Liturgy and I like the Tridentine Mass. I respect intellectual formidability of the West and the deep mysticism of the East. And I love Catholicism because it is a "both/and" religion, not an "either/or" religion. If you're a neo-scholastic type (or as one of my professors in grad school referred to himself jokingly as, a "filthy Thomist"), don't be afraid to engage the heart and make some room for mystery. 

Why We Don't Attend The Divine Liturgy

 (I feel I need to start this post with a disclaimer to preempt any teeth gnashing and tomato throwing and also make mention that I do not like liturgy wars. I have inadvertently started them in the past and I find they never end on a palatable note. As I heard a priest once note, "There's a difference between liturgists and terrorists--you can negotiate with terrorists." I'm not a liturgist, nor do I have a strong affinity for or knowledge in all things liturgical either. I realize it is a tender area that deserves respect and sensitivity to write about. This is meant to be a largely dispassionate account of our personal and particular reasons for attending traditional Mass in the Latin Church, despite my being Byzantine by rite, not to highlight any perceived deficiencies in one liturgy or another)

Before I became a Catholic, I attended the Divine Liturgy. Though most people coming into the Church or discovering the Eastern liturgy for the first time find it exotic and other-worldly, the liturgical Church of the East was my first exposure to Catholicism before I even had any interest in the theological truths of the Faith. In other words, it was familiar and, I should say, commonplace.

My father was born to a mother who was Russian Orthodox and a father who was Ukrainian Catholic. My father was baptized as an infant at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Philadelphia. When he married my mother, an Episcopalian, faith was a wedge--there was no agreement as to what my brothers and I were to be raised; we were baptized in the Episcopal church as infants, attended an occasional Sunday school lesson, but any formation ended there. To avoid disagreements and arguments, my parents would attend their respective churches separately, and us kids were free to go or not go (aside from Christmas and Easter, when we would attend one or the other church as a family). 

Because I was close with my father, I would occasionally 'tag along' when he would attend the Divine Liturgy at the Ukrainian Catholic church not far from our house on Sunday mornings. Incense, the gold domes and vestments and iconostasis, crossing yourself three times (with two fingers and thumbed joined) from right to left, bowing, standing (rather than kneeling), and the prayers--this was my first exposure to liturgy (though to my mom's credit as well, hers was a high-church Episcopal that would probably today very much resemble a Mass at an Anglican Ordinariate). When we would visit my dad's great aunt up in coal-country for a funeral or something, it was usually at a Russian Orthodox church. Even today, before communion, I have the habit of beating my breast three times by way of habit, praying, "God, be merciful to me a sinner. God cleanse me of my sins and have mercy on me. Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned without number." Because I never formally switched rites (the only time it became an issue was when I was discerning a monastic vocation), I sometimes have slight guilt about not observing the Byzantine fasts (no dairy, eggs, etc). But strict legalism has never been my forte.

My 'backdoor entrance' into the Church by way of the Byzantine rite was part the heritage of my father, and part happenstance. When I went off to college, my dad gave me a list of religious services at the university and pointed out the Catholic Masses on campus. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I had a strong ransoming conversion around age sixteen that got me thinking about the eternal, desiring the eschatological, and starving for lasting happiness. I showed up at a Catholic mass in the auditorium on campus--I believe it was my first Roman Catholic Mass. I was out of sorts--I couldn't understand the casual dress or what was going on at the altar. When I eventually approached a Roman Catholic priest to inquire about becoming Catholic, I was told about RCIA. As it turns out, I had "missed the cutoff" for that year. Patience not being one of my virtues, I sought out a local Ruthenien priest who came to campus once a month to celebrate the Divine Liturgy to see what my options were. He agreed to catechize me one on one. 

The priest himself was delighted to have someone looking to join the Church, especially in the Byzantine rite. Though the catechesis was more or less solid, the priest himself was clingy and seemed emotionally stunted. I became his kind of 'poster-boy' and while most of my now-friends went to the Roman Mass on campus, I was expected to attend the Divine Liturgy. A kind of unilateral co-dependency developed, and though I was confirmed, made my first Confession and received my first communion, I began to distance myself the priest and the liturgy, and try to attend the Latin Masses whenever I could. Maybe it was a latent and delayed rebellion of the traditional liturgy that I was exposed to (but never raised in fully). Ironic that the Novus Ordo would be the 'exotic' draw.

What I did appreciate, and ended up trading in tradition for, was a kind of universality of the largest rite within the Church. Because I did not have a refined liturgical palate, this was acceptable to me at the time and, I suppose, a concession. When I traveled throughout the world over the years, "the Mass was the Mass"--whether we were sitting on tree stumps instead of pews in Haiti or in the grand expanse of Sacre Coeur, there was a universal commonality. This seemed important, as I had a heart for evangelism ("telling the other beggars where to find bread") and there is strength in numbers. For the next twenty years I would traverse through the gamut of liberal Catholicism.

 When my parents moved and my dad left behind the Ukranian church he attended, I would invite him to Mass with us in their new town. The Roman church had become familiar territory to me, but was unfamiliar for him. The Liturgy for him was, I realized, a nostalgic and familial affair. It was his connection to his father, who died when he was 21 and left a deep hole. Though I told him of a Ukrainian Catholic church not far from our house he could attend, he has not yet. I'm not sure why.

I've wondered why we haven't either as a family. Our men's group took a "Sunday Field Trip" there a few weeks ago for the Diving Liturgy (I didn't attend, for whatever reason, maybe because it's not unfamiliar to me) and the priest was welcoming and excited to have newcomers exploring the Eastern liturgy. Though our parish home is now a diocesan Latin Mass parish, I am at least comforted that we have the SSPX, the FSSP, and the Ukrainian Catholic church all relatively equi-distant. 

But when you're making a home, I have to take my wife and family into consideration. My Filipino wife never really took to the Divine Liturgy, though she has attended it with me occasionally while we were dating at my dad's parish. Any Ukrainian heritage I have I don't feel particularly feel attached to. I don't speak the language. Though the liturgy itself is beautiful and full of 'smells and bells,' there is a nationalistic element to it (pierogie festivals, Ukrainian dance nights, old ladies who speak the language) that I just don't identify with. Ethnic 'ghetto' is too strong a word, but you get the idea. 

One thing about the Eastern liturgy I have grown to appreciate in retrospect, however, is that (like the Latin Mass) it appeals to male sensibilities. There is nothing effeminate or embarrassing about either Orthodoxy or Eastern Catholicism, and for that reason I would have no qualms about attending the Divine Liturgy over the Novus Ordo. From observation, there is also a subtle 'fluid' or relaxation (not casualness) I've noticed (again, in retrospect) to the liturgical posture of the priest when compared to the tight and focused precision in the Latin Mass. (Dr. Peter Kwasniewski notes these differences in liturgical expression in Let Latins Be Latins and Greeks Greek: On Remaining Faithful to Distinctive Identities (New Liturgical Movement) and here ("The Byzantine Liturgy, the Traditional Latin Mass, and the Novus Ordo--Two Brothers and a Stranger")

Where we "take refuge" in the Church is kind of like who you marry--there's no 'one reason,' but an amalgamation of factors and personal histories that goes into attraction. I dated a lovely Catholic girl in college who for all intents and purpose would have made a lovely wife. But the timing never seemed to work out with us, and that's really all I attribute it to. And thanks be to God. I have Latin friends who have found a beautiful refuge in the Byzantine Church and its rich liturgical tradition. 

For us, for whatever reason, we have made our home in tradition and in the West. I'm not sure I can go back to the Novus Ordo. Though one of these Sundays, I'm might just to have to get St. Nicholas to remember where I came from. For old time's sake.

Two Fingers To Death: On Siberia, Sedes, and Schism

"I follow no leader but Christ and join in communion with none but your blessedness [Pope Damasus I], that is, with the chair of Peter. I know that this is the rock on which the Church has been built. Whoever eats the Lamb outside this house is profane. Anyone who is not in the ark of Noah will perish when the flood prevails" (St. Jerome, Letters 15:2 [A.D. 396])


One of the nice things about being on break and off from work for a week is having time to, well, waste. Exhibit #1: trading an hour of my time on the couch watching a young British man build a cabin in the woods out of shipping pallets with his dad...one nail and plank at a time. No words, just sawing and hammering. My son loved it. I couldn't believe I watched the whole thing from start to finish. (6.5 million views on YouTube, btw)

The rabbit hole that is Youtube then suggested to me a documentary about a woman who lived in the taiga of the Russian wilderness as a hermit for seventy years. Sounds about up my alley. A film crew spent two days traveling by river to document her life. One of four children, she had been living alone for the past twenty seven years after the last of her family died. Her mother starved to death in the sixties. The woman's name was Agafia.

She would not accept bags of flour that had a barcode, because barcodes were a sign of the Beast. "Worldly life is frightening," she says, "If Christians sing worldly songs, they're doomed to eternal suffering. Same for music. Everyone who enjoys dancing creates infamy."

Ok, this was kind of interesting. She seemed of sound mind, yet lived in some of the harshest conditions on earth, alone, as a sixty nine year old woman, with a large tumor on her breast, surviving on potatoes and turnips, fish from the stream, bread, and bark. Her hands were gnarly from chopping down trees and stripping branches for the goats, starting fires with flint and tinder, and carrying pales of water.

But I didn't understand her faith. She was obviously a Christian believer, and I just assumed she was Russian Orthodox.

"My father's ancestors were true Christian believers. Ever since Prince Vladimir brought Christianity to Russian lands, our faith has been passed from generation to generation."

That faith, I learned later as the film progressed, was the faith of the "Old Believers" or "Old Ritualists" which can only be understood in a historical context.

In the 17th century, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Nikon, desired to unify the liturgical discrepancies between the Russian and Greek Orthodox churches and made heavy-handed (and, arguably, sloppy) ecclesiastical reforms. Old Believers, as they identified, rejected the reforms and clung tightly to what they saw as the original expression of the true Faith. Agafia describes this perspective in the film:

"Christ died on the cross for the whole world. He descended into Hell to free the righteous. But Patriarch Nikon went back to Hell to confer with Satan. So he introduced new laws. He was...the ultimate Satanist. He abolished the two-fingered sign of the cross handed down to us by Christ himself, changed books and church dogma, exterminated all our priests. They tortured Old Believers and imprisoned them."

With the State backing the reforms, they anathematized the old rites and books and those who still used them. Old Believers were arrested and executed, and those who fled went to Lithuania, Ukraine, and Romania. Others, like Agafia's family, stayed in Russia, and hid in the Siberian wilderness to escape persecution.

Agafia seemed to belong to the more extreme and ascetic Bezpopovtsy grouping of Old Believers, who were largely priestless (in contrast to the more moderate conservative Popovtsy faction) and believed the world had fallen into the hands of the AntiChrist. "Only those Christians who hold on to the true faith of Christ, commit good deeds, repent and pray to the Lord for forgiveness will receive God's mercy," Agafia tells the camera crew, filming her praying the Psalms in her dark and crowded cabin. This passing on of a faith in isolation, sans priests or ecclesiastical lineage, seems to be the Orthodox equivalent of the Kakure Kirishitan in Japan, who were also forced into isolation due to persecution in the 17th century and who emerged with a deformed faith barely recognizable to Catholicism:

"With their Scripture forgotten, no real creed, and no catalogue of doctrines, the practice of this religion has evolved into a narrow fidelity to ancestral rituals.

"This is the only thing they have the ceremony," Whelan said. "That becomes their dogma. You have to do it right, you have to say the prayers right, or it won't have power. In the absence of other things that most other traditions have, this becomes the thing you've got to be true to."

"I do think that they are religious men in their own way," she said, that their prayers are directed toward God.

A tiny Catholic Church on Narushima attracts a small congregation, but the Kakure Kirishitan priests are not interested in joining it. Although they probably understand intellectually the relationship between Kakure Kirishitan and the Catholic Church, Catholicism to them remains foreign and removed.

...In the last two priests the universal religious struggle between the conservative and the liberal. One priest, in being correct to the past, is blind to the realities around him. The other, attempting to make the ritual relevant to those who don't truly understand the tradition, makes compromises that dilute the best of what had been preserved."

In a largely Protestantized country like the United States, it may be hard to understand the interconnectedness of ritual and dogma that the Eastern church has always held, that church rituals had from the beginning represented and symbolized doctrinal truth. Old Believers felt that such seemingly innocuous changes as using three fingers instead of two to make the sign of the Cross, or translations that altered pronunciation, struck at the heart of their faith, and they would rather go to their death than deny Christ, who was Truth itself. The famous personification of this in the Surikov painting of the exiling of Boyaryna Morozova (considered a martyr-saint among Old Believers), being carried away by sled while holding up the iconic "two fingers" in defiance.

I found the history of the Orthodox Church in Russia interesting, as I wasn't super familiar with this period in history. We tend to get tunnel vision as Westerners and Americans and Catholics, so it's good I think to peak out from time to time to get some perspective. What I saw in this documentary, as peculiar and specifically geo-religious as it appeared to be, tended to reinforce the general anthropological struggles of religion and religious expression: conservative vs progressive, traditional vs reformed, true vs schismatic believers. It happens in all the world religions: Sunnis and Shias in Islam, Orthodox and Reformed Judaism. Buddhists of the Mahayana school use the pejorative term "Hinayana" ("Lesser Vehicle") to describe Theravada (Traditional) Buddhism, a term Theravada Buddhists would find offensive.

In our own Church, we have a Pope that some on the extreme end think of as an Anti Christ and not validly elected. The issues of today are different yet similar to the struggles of Agafia and her family: Sedevacantists who believe there has not been a validly elected pope since Pope Pius XII was elected in 1958 due to the embracing of the heresy of modernism.

We have heard of the "Spirit of Vatican II" Catholicism (the kind of mirror that reflects this heresy of modernism and botched, sloppy, jarring roll-out of universal liturgical reforms for the world to see) being in contrast to the actual documents of the Second Vatican Council. Catholics would call sedevacantists schismatic on the grounds that they do not accept the authority of the Pope (whether Pope Francis, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II and I, Pope Paul VI, or Pope John XXIII). No authority=no Catholicism.

A sedevacantist may counter that the Church forfeited that authority in its embrace of heresy, and the seat of Peter being vacant is a sign of the times for true believers, or which they would count themselves. They did not leave the Church; the Church left them. They are willing to suffer and endure in defense of what they see as the Old Faith, the True Faith, before it was corrupted.

So, these things are nothing new. "Bad" popes are nothing new, and schism is nothing new. Desires for an authentic orthodox expression of faith and reforms of reforms as a way of getting to the "heart of things" apart from ritual and dogma (Protestantism) is nothing new. It can be viewed historically, yes. But for the believer (or, in some cases, for the new convert trying to navigate these choppy ecclesial waters), these are highly personal and important things. A believer like Boyaryna Morozova would rather be tortured and exiled to Siberia than use three fingers instead of two to make the sign of the cross, while another Christian believer might have no problem re-baptizing a new member of their congregation in accordance with their norms of belief.

I suspect Agafia's story is a mix of Russian fortitude, admirable stubbornness, dogmatic integrity, and religious fervor. For a foreigner watching from their computer screen thousands of miles away in the comfort of a heated and air conditioned dwelling, who may have skipped church to do some shopping or stay in their pjs, it may be an anthropological curiosity. But it also presents us with the questions: what is the true Faith? Are we willing to die, be exiled, live cut off from society, to preserve it? Does it really matter whether we use two fingers or three in rituals like the Sign of the Cross? Who has the authority to interpret scripture, proclaim dogma, and excommunicate? What makes one Catholic?

For me that last part is the one that isn't a real struggle: you cannot be Catholic without the pope. You may be more austere in your penance, more sincere in your convictions, more virtuous in your service, and more astute in your apologetics. But if you don't have the pope, you are on your own.

Pope Francis is not my kind of pope. I find his words and exhortations ambiguous and confusing. I've been critical of him in the past in my own little world of preference and influence. I don't even doubt what I'm reading in Malachi Martin's "Windswept House" about the smoke of Satan entering the Church, as Paul VI warned.  But who cares what I think or prefer? He is still my pope. I cannot separate my religious expression from subjection to his authority as universal head of the Church of Christ.

To apostatize is not only to deny Christ but to deny the Faith. They are not separate, just as being Catholic and recognizing the Pope as the head of the Church are not separable. I have no real knowledge and no real virtue, no real suffering to my name, no beautiful liturgy to extol, and no real merit to bring before Christ when I meet Him at the Last Judgment. And I have no other ark to cling to in this life but the Church. I am adrift without her. So I will cling to that. Pope and all.

"There is one God and one Christ, and one Church, and one chair founded on Peter by the word of the Lord. It is not possible to set up another altar or for there to be another priesthood besides that one altar and that one priesthood. Whoever has gathered elsewhere is scattering" (Cyprian of Carthage, Letters 43[40]:5 [A.D. 253]).