Belloc - Church as Conservator

YOU HAVE BEEN told, "Christianity (a word, by the way, quite unhistorical) crept into Rome as she declined, and hastened that decline." That is bad history.* Rather accept this phrase and retain it: "The Faith is that which Rome accepted in her maturity; nor was the Faith the cause of her decline, but rather the conservator of all that could be conserved ...

It was not the spread of the Faith which undermined the high civilization of pagan antiquity; on the contrary, the Faith saved all that could be saved; and, but for the conversion of the Roman Empire, nothing of our culture would have remained ...

We must begin by laying it down, again as an historical fact, not to be removed by affection one way or the other, that the conversion of the Roman Empire was a conversion to what was called by all our ancestry and what is still called by those with any just historical sense, the Catholic Church.

- Hilaire Belloc

* Belloc took a 1st in History while up at Oxford University

Knox - 'He Suffered' - Pt. 2

Ronald Knox's excerpted explanation of "He suffered" from his book, The Creed in Slow Motion, which we began here, continues:

SO, YOU SEE, IT isn't necessary to explain away a great deal, if you want to persuade yourself that our Lord never experienced human suffering. There were heretics in early days, as I think I told you before, who thought that; who made out that our Lord didn't really become a man at his Incarnation; he only wore a kind of phantom body, something like a ghost. And in our own day the Christian Scientists - the people who tell you that you haven't really got a toothache, you've only got a stupid idea that you've got a toothache, and therefore the best thing to do is to pray about it, instead of going to the dentist - the Christian Scientists would tell you that our Lord didn't suffer. Oh, no, he was perfectly wise, and therefore he knew that there was no such thing as suffering, and that is why he went about persuading the blind people that they weren't blind, and the lepers that they weren't lepers, and Lazarus that he wasn't dead. If you are perfectly holy, they say, then you must be perfectly healthy. And, you know, it's good Catholic theology, though I don't know whether it's a matter of faith, that our Lord while he was on earth never suffered from any disease. His human body was such a perfect thing that it couldn;t go wrong of its own accord; it was only when he treated it roughly (or when other people treated it roughly) that it could enter into Adam's uncomfortable legacy of pain.

However, there it is; our Lord was hungry, was tired, did suffer, even before Pontius Pilate comes into the picture at all. And at the same time his whole life, as it is recorded for us in the Gospels, is a kind of campaign against suffering - no more blind, no more deaf, no more lame, no more paralytics, no more lepers - that seems to be his ideal. Now, you ask yourself, is suffering a good thing or a bad thing? If it is a good thing, why did he spend so much of his time in making it disappear from the countryside round him, when he might have been attending, instead, to the needs of people's souls? And if suffering is a bad thing, why did he bring upon himself - for it is evident all through that he brought it on himself - a death attended by such crowded circumstances of pain? What are we to make of suffering ourselves? Is it a thing to run away from, or is it a thing we ought to welcome? He suffered; our Lord suffered; what about his servants?

Well, let us take the answer to that question bit by bit. In the first place, suffering is of its own nature a bad thing, not a good thing. When I say that it's a bad thing, I don't mean of course that it's wicked to have a toothache; I don't want to have you coming round to me on Saturday evening and confessing that you've had a slight attack of neuralgia. I mean that suffering is an imperfection, brought into this world of ours by the fall of man: it's a blot on creation, it degrades us. And therefore, in the presence of a very good person, suffering tends to run away and hide itself; when our Lord met a leper, the leprosy couldn't maintain itself, it fled from his presence. And so it has been in the lives of his saints. You can read in the Bible how a dead man was being carried out to burial once, when a party of invading Syrians appeared; and the undertaker and his assistants thought it would be a good thing to cut short the funeral procession, so they dropped the corpse into the nearest tomb they could see. It happened to be the tomb of the prophet Elisha, who had just died. And the dead man immediately came to life. Death, you may say, couldn't bear to find itself anywhere near anyone as holy as Elisha, just as the undertaker couldn't bear to be near a party of invading Syrians. Death said (as it were), "Oh, gosh, I can't stand this," and ran away, leaving the man to come to life. That's putting it rather crudely, but you see what I mean; suffering is of its own nature an evil, and it tends to disappear when it is brought into contact with a very holy person, just as darkness disappears when you bring a candle into a room. (Continued in Pt. 3)

- Ronald A. Knox

Knox - 'He Suffered' - Pt. 1

Monsignor Ronald A. Knox, writing and preaching to his war-time (WWII) congregation of school girls at Aldenham, produced for my money the most lucid explication of the Creed in print, The Creed in Slow Motion (readily available from Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, IN).

Chapter by chapter, Knox elucidates bite-sized portions of the Creed in a manner that one reviewer says exhibited "a freedom from ecclesial decorum which is sometimes startling, yet always with a purpose;" namely, to show how the age-old faith resonates with our contemporary experiences.

So, my purpose now is to display Knox's superlative grasp of the Catholic faith in a series of posts in which I will, gentle reader, give you in its entirety chapter IX, "He Suffered." It is apropos for this season of Lent, and, in a few short pages, it brings to us the meaning and purpose not only of our Lord's salvific suffering, but the meaning and purpose of our own suffering in this mortal plane of temporal existence. I hope you will find it as important as I have.

By the way, as friend Gil Bailie notes, good authors always create their own precursors. I lay no claim to being a "good author," but I will say that Knox here gives the foundation for my own book, A Little Guide for Your Last Days that was written, submitted, and published long before I laid eyes on Knox's book.

And so I begin presenting to you, "He Suffered - Part 1, excerpted from The Creed in Slow Motion."

I EXPECT SOME of your will be wanting to complain that I've only given you half a clause out of the Credo there, instead of a whole clause. When you say the Credo, you say, "Sufton Plntius Pilate," and that's that. But, you see, quite apart from the question when or how our Lord suffered, it is important to get it into our heads that he did suffer. Go back for a moment to what you rememeber of the Gospels, and tell me what evidence we have, earlier than his agony in the garden of Gethsemani, to tell us that our Lord did suffer? It's not so easy, is it? I think I'm right in saying that there are only three occasions, before Gethsemani, on which we hear of our Lord as suffering any kind of bodily discomfort. When his temptation in the wilderness was over, we are told that he hungered. When he passed by the fig tree that had leaves but no fruit on it, we are told that he was hungry. And when he sat down by the well and talked to the woman of Samaria, we are told that he was tired after his journey. Elsewhere we hear of his being sorry about things - he wept over Jerusalem, for example, and over the grave of Lazarus - but except on those three occasions I don't think we ever hear that he suffered bodily discomfort - till Gethsemani. (Continues in Pt. 2)

3rd Sunday of Lent

Living Water

Knox - The Indelible Mark

WE BELONG TO OUR LORD, that is, our Owner, just as the farmer's sheep belong to the farmer; that is why we carry his mark. If you have had anything to do with sheep, you will know that they have an incorrigible habit of squirming their way through hedges and getting mixed up with the sheep of the farmer next door. And that is why, especially when sheep are turned out to graze on hillsides, the farmer who owns them puts a sort of splotch on their sides, rather like what happened to you the last time you spilt the red ink. And so, if they do get straying and mix up with other people's flocks, there's no great harm done. So it was that, when you were baptized, our Lord put his mark on you, the sign of the cross. You and I can't see it there, because it belongs to the supernatural, not to the natural order; but an angel can see whether you are baptized or not, just as easily as you or I can see when somebody's got a smut on their nose. And that mark is indelible; it never comes out.

- Ronald A. Knox

Frost Warnings

Saint Fiacre, I appeal to you on this Feast of the Annunciation to protect all the plants of gardeners who realize with some trepidation that we will be having frost again tonight.

Many thanks, good saint!

Lev - A Chivalrous Jewish Knight

No display of crucifixes in classrooms? Had the EU cast out not only the last remnant of reminders of Europe's Christian origins, not only the Christ Child in the bathwater but the Savior of mankind upon his glorious throne?

Elizabeth Lev relates how close it came, and how a Jewish "knight" came riding to do battle:

(T)he true knight in shining armor of this story is a New York University law professor, Joseph Weiler, a devout and observant Jew, who represented, pro bono, the governments of Armenia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Lithuania, Malta, The Russian Federation and San Marino against the court's ruling.

With expert arguments, a mixture of wisdom drawn from the Old and New World and an occasional spark of humor, Europe's modern Galahad, made his winning case.

He compared the cross to a picture of the queen of England hanging in the classroom. "Like the cross," Weiler noted, "that picture has a double meaning. It is a photo of the head of state. It is, too, a photo of the titular head of the Church of England."

"Would it be acceptable," he asked, "for someone to demand that the picture of the queen may not hang in the school since it is incompatible with their religious conviction or their right to education since they are Catholics, or Jews, or Muslims?"

He closed with a warning, one that should echo in the United States: "A one rule fits all, as in the decision of the Second Chamber, devoid of historical, political, demographic and cultural context is not only inadvisable, but undermines the very pluralism, diversity and tolerance which the Convention is meant to guarantee and which is the hallmark of Europe."

Weiler won the day -- the court decided 15-2 in favor of Italy. Much like the Knights of Malta in 1565, who single-handedly held off the Turkish fleet, Professor Joseph Weiler and the nations and advisors who came to Italy's rescue, struck a decisive blow in favor of Europe's religious freedom.

Read all here.

By their fruits

Enough said.

Royal Viewpoint

Very interesting, acute, and incisive analysis about England from an insider if ever there was one here.

Knox - Creatures of Earth and Heaven

CREATURES EXIST TO REMIND us of God and make us think how much greater the Maker must be than the things he has made; how much more irresistible his power must be than the power of the whirlwind, how much more captivating his beauty must be than the beauty of the sunset. Creatures exist so that we can enjoy them and be grateful for them; so that when we have had a holiday we can go to bed thanking God, with a glow in our hearts, for all his goodness to us. Creatures exist so that we may make a right and wise use of them, mortifying ourselves and disciplining our appetites instead of being selfish about them, and making pigs of ourselves over them. All that is true of God's earthly creatures; but meanwhile, God made heaven as well as earth, and not only earth, but heaven, is ours, is meant for us to enjoy. Even now, the protection of the holy angels and the prayers of our Blessed Lady and all the saints are available to us, because we are his children.

How much more thrilling it will be when one day, please God, we put Purgatory behind us, and find, in heaven, the end for which we were really created, the existence which really satisfies the longings of our nature! Only then will the Artist put the finishing touches to his works; only then shall we be able to admire the grand scale of it, the perfect symmetry of it. The curtain will be drawn aside, and the Author of all that exists will stand there to take our applause.

- Ronald A. Knox

Belloc - Prophet of Our Times

Hilaire Belloc is lauded as a prophet of our times by Father C. John McCloskey at ZENIT in an excellent interview here. Remember Belloc's immortal words:

"One thing in this world is different from all other. It has a personality and a force. It is recognized, and (when recognized) most violently loved or hated. It is the Catholic Church. Within that household the human spirit has roof and hearth. Outside it, is the night."

Knox - That God Exists

WHEN YOU ARE YOUNG, YOU CAN always fall back on yourself for company, unless you are a very melancholy kind of person. When you go to bed at night, and can't get to sleep yet, you can be quite happy thinking about your own plans and your own pleasures, your own friends and your own ambitions; you can lie there day-dreaming, and tell yourself stories about what you are going to do when you grow up ... But when you've had fifty years and more of your own company, it ceases to be quite so enjoyable - you've got bored with it. And that breeds a dreadful loneliness inside the human soul, unless the human soul has learned, and has managed to remember, and still believes, that God exists. You have begun to see yourself as a pretty second-rate sort of article; your prospects of getting your way over this and that don't seem so frightfully important; your judgment of things and of people doesn't seem to matter so much; what the map of Europe will be like in a hundred years' time is a speculation that doesn't much interest you.

THEN, to believe that God exists means that you have something - better still, that you have somebody - to fall back upon; everything still matters, because there is God's will to be taken into account, God's glory to be considered. "I BELIEVE IN GOD"; forty years from now, if you keep then the faith you have now, you will be thanking God that God exists.

- Ronald A. Knox

God Wills It

As historian Thomas F. Madden (Director of Saint Louis University's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies) elucidated to Colleen Carroll Campbell, Christians in general and Catholics in particular need not scurry away when conversation turns to either the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition.

An excellent if slightly dated article on the former can be found here.

Lord - Age of the Blessed Sacrament

Madonna with the Host - Ingres

THROUGH THE GREAT MERCY OF GOD, we happen to live in the age of the Blessed Sacrament ...

The hatred that once reached out to fling the visible Christ into the plot of the Passion we have seen reach out once again to obliterate His priesthood, destroy the Mass, and make impossible the Eucharistic presence of the Incarnate God in His world. After all persecution is an act of perverted faith. Men cannot attack what they believe does not exist. The vicious persecution against the Catholic priesthood is the attack upon Christ and the Mass, the method by which He ordained He should enter the world. An age of persecution, like ours, is a glorious age of faith - angelic and demoniac - in the real presence ...

This is a great age, the age of the Eucharist and the age of Mary. The Eucharist and the Mother of the Savior are inseparable. The age that loves and honors one must love and honor the other. Our age gratefully and deeply loves them both, virgin Mother and virgin Son.

- Daniel A. Lord, S.J.

Christian Friendship - Close to Heaven

What a wonderful occasion of providential faith and hope and charity. After an hour and one-half of dealing with a "home health nurse" and my apparent prime directive, who should show up at my doorstep but fellow Mass'keteer, young D'Artagnan, (graphic artist of the above) and Lady Dawn Eden! Each bore not only lunch-for-one (for herself; D'Art and I had eaten) but other fine, fine gifts and delights.

And for the next two and one-half hours, old Athos was bathed and swathed in such milk of human kindness, Christian friendship, and called-out-of-the-world-of-woes extradition that he thought he had somehow missed that rending of soul from body and been taken directly to the third heaven of what our brother Saint Paul speaks:

"I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell." (2 Corinthians 12:2-4)

We chatted about books (ours and others') and new projects, one of which will take one of us far afield. We walked down to a nearby park and strolled next to a meandering stream. And then - the ceremonial exchanging of gifts!

Goodness! Lady Dawn, ever a keeper of what Tolkien called in hobbit terminology, mathom, brought out from her storehouse things old and new. And let us say, gentle reader, that D'Artagnan and Lady Dawn did not leave Athos' humble dwelling empty-handed. The former received in token of the chivalry which all of the Mass'keteers share in common brotherhood, and the latter is covered, though not yet blessed, in four-ways most blessed for her continuous deeds of errantry and pitched battle against the wicked and snares of the devil.

Can heaven come down and touch earth in any way more acceptably and nobly all of a Monday afternoon? Answer: Yes. For, before D'Artagnan and Lady Dawn left, we joined in prayer under the divine sign of the Most Holy Trinity and - gasp! - blessedly in the reliquarial presence (1st order) of Saint Dominic, compliments of a religious' gift to Lady Dawn in the wee hours at Notre Dame. D'Artagnan said he felt the great saint's hand on his shoulder as we knelt and prayed ...

May you have such an encounter with the true, good, and beautiful, gentle reader. And I will recount the deeds of two great friends and their superabundance of charity for long ages to come.

P. S. - Life is sweet and good if besides hosting friends like the above, one can field a phone call of concern on a Sunday afternoon, too, from a great friend, mentor, and all round great guy who now, again, lives in California.