Book Review: Francois Mauriac's "Holy Thursday"

My best friend and I read this book during Lent and got together after Mass on Friday last week to complete our discussion of Nobel Prize winning Francois Mauriac's Holy Thursday: The Night That Changed the World in the Sophia Institute Press edition and translation. It's evidently not in their catalog now, but Cluny Media has a different edition, The Eucharist: The Mystery of Holy Thursday, available.

I went through a Francois Mauriac phase after college, reading The Viper's Tangle, Therese, and The Woman of the Pharisees, in my pursuit of covering the "Catholic Revival" in Literature. This is a very different book as Mauriac describes his memories of attending Holy Thursday Mass, with the Stripping of the Altars and the Mandatum (the Washing of the Feet) as major events. 

It would have been helpful to the reader if Sophia Institute Press would have explained that the Mass on Holy Thursday was different than it is today when Mauriac wrote and when he experienced it as a child. The Stripping of the Altars and reposition of the Host for the Good Friday service (when only the priest received Holy Communion) took place before the Washing of the Feet. When he discusses First Holy Communions, a note to explain that until Pope Pius X's reform that Sacrament was sometimes delayed until the age of 14 would also have been helpful. It was like the "graduating" Sacrament then and Mauriac comments that many stopped receiving Holy Communion or attending Mass after that. A reader not knowing that in 1910 Pius X set the age of seven (7) as the appropriate time of receiving First Holy Communion wouldn't understand Mauriac's comment.

Writing in 1931, Mauriac also comments on how good it was that frequent reception of Holy Communion was encouraged; another contribution of Pope Pius X (in 1905). The influence of Jansenism had discouraged many from going to Communion more than once a year.

In spite of these criticisms, I wouldn't want anyone to be dissuaded from reading this book. There are some beautifully written (translated) passages, like this one:

The anniversary of that evening when the small Host arose on a world sleeping in darkness should fill us with joy. But that very night was the one when the Lord Jesus was delivered up. His best friends could still taste the Bread in their mouths and they were going to abandon Him, to deny Him, to betray Him. And we also, on Holy Thursday, can still taste in our mouths this Bread that is no longer bread; we have not finished adoring this Presence in our bodies, the inconceivable humility of the Son of God, when we have to rise hastily to follow Him to the garden of agony.

We should like to tarry, to see on His shoulder the place where St. John’s forehead rested, to relive in spirit this moment in the history of the world when a piece of bread was broken in deep silence, when a few words sufficed to seal the new alliance of the Creator with His creature.

Already, in the thought of the One who pronounced the words, millions of priests are bending over the chalice, millions of virgins are watching before the tabernacle. A multitude of the servants of the poor are eating the daily Bread which compensates for their daily sacrifice, and endless ranks of children, making their First Communion, open lips which have not yet lost their purity. (Chapter I, "The Breaking of the Bread", pp. 3-4)

Or this one:

It is not when He withdrew into the desert that He felt the greatest loneliness, but when He was in the midst of the flock of those wavering hearts which the Spirit had not yet kindled. Doubtless, it was necessary that the man in Him be reassured by the God so that He would not lose heart when confronted by the infinite disproportion between His message and the poor human race destined to receive it.

However, He did not dedicate Himself to solitude as have so many men of genius. He did not flee from the crowd, but gave Himself up to it. What gives Christ as a man a unique character among the masters of the world is first this gift of Himself, this complete abandonment of Himself to the crowd. Before being delivered, He delivered Himself. He does not belong to Himself, not having come to be served, but to serve. He is the slave of slaves. Nothing belongs to Him. He lives in the street, in the fields, in villages. Miserable bodies affected with leprosy crowd Him, suffocate Him. He seeks refuge in a fishing boat, in order to be able to breathe. Dirty hands grab His cloak; virtue springs from Him.

No one kept less aloof; no one was ever less guarded, more accessible — such He is still today in the tabernacle, given up entirely to all — yet nevertheless, He was alone with His Father, in that mysterious, ineffable union which He sometimes confessed, for this secret also escaped Him: “No one knows who the Father is, except the Son.” (Chapter VIII, "The Secret of Holy Thursday", pp. 58-59)

Mauriac obviously loves and admires St. Therese of Lisieux: he cites her several times, and he relies upon St. Thomas Aquinas and his Corpus Christi Office and hymns when discussing Transubstantiation. He also cites Bishop Bossuet and Jacques Riviere without naming his sources and recommends Jacques Maritain's The Angelic Doctor.

Reading this book by Mauriac makes me wonder about three books Cluny Media also publishes: The Son of Man, The Life of Jesus, and What I Believe. But they will have to wait for another day . . . before I decide to purchase them. There's a line!

This Morning: Chesterton, Thanksgiving, and Aquinas

Just a reminder that Matt Swaim and I will discuss G.K. Chesterton and Gratitude on the Son Rise Morning Show at 6:45 a.m. Central/7:45 a.m. Eastern. Please listen live here on the Sacred Heart Radio website; the segment will be repeated on November 26 during the special Thanksgiving Day episode, while the hosts and staff at Sacred Heart Radio enjoy their Chestertonian Thanksgiving feasts!

As I read and contemplated Chesterton's 1903 essay on "The Philosophy of Gratitude" I thought that his parable of "God in the Dock" was an indirect answer to Ivan Karamazov's desire to return his "ticket" to God because of all the human cruelty and evil in the world. Unlike Aloysha, who is mute before his brother's examples of innocent children suffering, Chesterton would have reminded Ivan that there are also good families and people who rescue children. Ivan should have some feelings "about the normal"; some "gratitude for the positive miracles of life". Like the human judge in Chesterton's "Cosmos at the bar" parable, Ivan should be careful about whom and how he judges.

(BTW: I don't know if Chesterton ever read The Brothers Karamazov, but he did know something about Dostoevsky, as this quotation proves.)

Chesterton intuitively grasped--before he wrote about "The Dumb Ox"--St. Thomas Aquinas's reasoning that thanksgiving is, as Cicero stated, a special part of the Cardinal virtue of Justice. As we say in the dialogue before the Preface at Mass: "It is right and just" that we "give thanks to the Lord our God". Aquinas comments in question 106, Section 1 of The Summa Theologiæ:

Accordingly, since what we owe God, or our father, or a person excelling in dignity, is not the same as what we owe a benefactor from whom we have received some particular favor, it follows that after religion, whereby we pay God due worship, and piety, whereby we worship our parents, and observance, whereby we worship persons excelling in dignity, there is thankfulness or gratitude, whereby we give thanks to our benefactors. And it is distinct from the foregoing virtues, just as each of these is distinct from the one that precedes, as falling short thereof.

And Chesterton obviously agreed with Aquinas's reasoning in Article 3, that we owe thanks to every benefactor--even the man who passes the mustard--because "it is right and just":

Every effect turns naturally to its cause; wherefore Dionysius says (Div. Nom. i) that "God turns all things to Himself because He is the cause of all": for the effect must needs always be directed to the end of the agent. Now it is evident that a benefactor, as such, is cause of the beneficiary. Hence the natural order requires that he who has received a favor should, by repaying the favor, turn to his benefactor according to the mode of each. And, as stated above with regard to a father (II-II:31:3; II-II:101:2), a man owes his benefactor, as such, honor and reverence, since the latter stands to him in the relation of principle; but accidentally he owes him assistance or support, if he need it.

There's a hierarchy of benefactors from the man who passes the mustard, to our parents, to Almighty God, and some friends and family in between. Chesterton agrees that it is right and just that we express our gratitude appropriately, from a polite "Thank you for passing the mustard," to a heart-felt "Thank you for loving me from my birth in this family until this day", to a worshipful, sacrificial "Thank you for creating me, redeeming me, forgiving me, and blessing me." 

It is right and just. Amen.

June 14: Corpus Christi, Flag Day, my Father, and Chesterton

Today, Sunday, June 14 is certainly a day filled with significance: The Catholic Church, in the Novus Ordo of the Latin Liturgy of the Roman Rite, celebrates the Solemnity of Corpus Christi in many places; it is a Sunday, and therefore a Solemnity under any circumstance in that Rite; it is also Flag Day in the U.S.A.; it's the 10th anniversary of my father's funeral, and the 84th anniversary of G.K.Chesterton's death. June 14 was the Sunday after the Thursday celebration of Corpus Christi in 1936. As Joseph Pearce asserts in an article for The Catholic World Report, Chesterton appreciated both the Truth and the Beauty of St. Thomas Aquinas' hymns for the feast of Corpus Christi.

In chapter five of Chesterton's The Dumb Ox, he discusses those hymns and Aquinas' poetry:

But the composer of the Corpus Christi service was not merely what even the wild and woolly would call a poet; he was what the most fastidious would call an artist. His double function rather recalls the double activity of some great Renaissance craftsman, like Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci, who would work on the outer wall, planning and building the fortifications of the city; and then retire into the inner chamber to carve or model some cup or casket for a reliquary. The Corpus Christi Office is like some old musical instrument, quaintly and carefully inlaid with many coloured stones and metals; the author has gathered remote texts about pasture and fruition like rare herbs; there is a notable lack of the loud and obvious in the harmony; and the whole is strung with two strong Latin lyrics. Father John O'Connor has translated them with an almost miraculous aptitude; but a good translator will be the first to agree that no translation is good; or, at any rate, good enough. How are we to find eight short English words which actually stand for "Sumit unus, sumunt mille; quantum isti, tantum ille"? How is anybody really to render the sound of the "Pange Lingua", when the very first syllable has a clang like the clash of cymbals?

I've been listening the past few weeks to the Cardinall's Musicke's recording of the Propers for Ascension, Pentecost, and Corpus Christi composed by William Byrd. It includes a section on Devotions to the Blessed Sacrament with Byrd's settings of O salutarius hostia (one verse), Pange lingua gloriosi, and of course, O Sacrum Convivium, the antiphon for the Magnificat of Second Vespers, but not the sequence of the Mass, Lauda, Sion. Speaking of translations, this resource includes translations by Edward Caswall, John Mason Neale, and Gerard Manley Hopkins! The Father John O'Connor that Chesterton mentions was the priest who inspired the Father Brown character and received Chesterton into the Catholic Church in 1922.

My brother and sister and I will gather to celebrate our father's life later this afternoon, after I attend the External Celebration of Corpus Christi in the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite in the late morning.

James Monroe Joseph Boyer died on June 10, 2010 and his Funeral Mass was on Monday, June 14, Flag Day.

Book Review, Part II: John Henry Newman on Truth and Its Counterfeits

As I noted in my first post, I'm continuing my review of Professor Reinhard Hutter's new book from the Catholic University of America Press, John Henry Newman on Truth and Its Counterfeits: A Guide for Our Times. I thought it would be just too long a post otherwise, especially since I am including a detailed table of contents, including the subheads from each chapter. In my post on Saturday, April 18, I offered my comments on the Prologue, Chapter 1 on Conscience and Its Counterfeits, and Chapter 2 on Faith and Its Counterfeits, so now I'll pick up with comments on Chapters 3 and 4 and the Epilogue and then offer my overall review and comments on this book.

I like the cover of the book: the designer has adapted a photograph of Newman the National Institute for Newman Studies identifies as being taken  in 1888 (and published in a book titled Cardinal Newman by William Barry). The photograph may have been flopped (Newman is facing left in the NINS portrait) and color has been added subtly to his face and hair and to the outer garment Newman is wearing (red). That is also the portrait of Newman that Scepter Publishers and I selected for the cover of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation with Newman facing Henry VIII, although their designer cropped it differently and left it in black and white:

It is also the portrait chosen by Oxford University Press for the 2019 reissued edition of Father Ian Ker's great biography of Newman, with different color choices (red for his cassock and zucchetto):

But enough about the cover: on to the rest of contents!

Chapter 3. The Development of Doctrine and Its Counterfeits
*Development of Doctrine: The Voice of the Magisterium
*How Is an Authentic Development of Doctrine to be Discerned?
*Newman's Seven Notes of an Authentic Development of Doctrine
*A Test Case of Authentic Development of Doctrine: "Dignitatis Humanae"
*Conclusion: Two Counterfeits of the Authentic Development of Doctrine
*Appendix: Francisco Marin-Sola's Thomist Reception of Newman

Hutter begins this chapter (pp. 130-131) with a great explication of Newman's famous sentence, "To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant" as he concludes that the history Newman is speaking of is salvation history, the "unfolding truth of the divine Word" which the Catholic Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, continuously passes on. Thus "to be deep in history in this precise sense of salvation history means to be deep in the [Catholic] Church."

Hutter then examines "the voice of the recent magisterium to ascertain its teaching on the development of doctrine", citing Dei Filius from the First Vatican Council and Dei Verbum from the Second, reviews Newman's seven notes from the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, and then provides a test case.

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this chapter is how Professor Hutter submits his argument to Father Ian Ker's chapter 2, "The Hermeneutic of Change in Continuity" in Newman on Vatican II in developing his test case of whether or not the Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, is an authentic development of doctrine. I think it's worth quoting his footnote in which he says he abstains "from the academic temptation to be original" and "rather gratefully" relies "on Ker's astute analysis and argumentation" because it "strikes [him] as just right" (note 36, page 146). Then Hutter goes on to use pages 65-71 of Father Ker's book, demonstrating how Dignitatis Humanae, magisterially affirmed at the Second Vatican Council, passes the test of Newman's seven notes of true development of doctrine--which is not a matter of private judgment or sovereign self-determination. He also comments on the dangers of both ecclesial antiquarianism and presentism: neither a static past nor a progressive future fulfill the Church's mandate to teach the Gospel and hand on the Tradition. Hutter brings in a connection to St. Thomas Aquinas in the Appendix to this chapter as he explores the work of Dom Francisco Marin-Sola, OP, and his work on the development of Christian doctrine in The Homogeneous Evolution of Catholic Dogma, a neglected work.

Chapter 4. The University and Its Counterfeit
*University Education and (Natural) Theology as a Science
*The Indispensability of (Natural) Theology for University Education
*Becoming a Master of the Twofold "Logos", Thought and Word
*A Pragmatic Postscript
*Appendix: Metaphysics and Natural Theology

I have been reading and studying Newman's The Idea of a University since I first discovered Newman in 1979 while attending Wichita State University as sophomore pursuing a B.A. in English Language and Literature, knowing then that I could not receive the fullness of a liberal arts, university education at that institution as it was willing and able to instruct me. As a few of the students at the Newman Center who were enrolled in the Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and I realized, we were going to have to seek other sources for that fullness of education, unfortunately rather unsystematically.

Based upon his extensive experience at colleges and universities as a student and professor, Hutter also has a great respect for the idea and ideal Newman presents in these lectures while knowing that many of those institutions he's familiar with have not achieved the goals of a fully integrated university education. He calls most of the colleges and universities that exist today "polytechnical" institutions, without a unity of purpose beyond the sports team and making money. He mocks derisively those colleges who add a few master degree programs so they may claim the title university without approaching universal knowledge at all! They become polytechnical, hyperpluralistic institutions on a smaller scale.

Once again fulfilling his thesis that Newman is "A Guide for Our Times", Hutter demonstrates how Newman anticipated the decline of university education since he saw signs of great errors based upon private judgment and the sovereign subject: "authority, tradition, habit, moral instinct, and the divine influences" were being rejected in the nineteenth century; "patience of thought, and depth and consistency of view" were mocked, while "free discussion and fallible judgment [were] prized as the birthright of each individual." Newman knew he was already fighting a battle he might lose when he founded the Catholic University of Ireland in Dublin (although he lost it for a different reason) as a bulwark against the secularized, liberalized, utilitarian university of his own time. Newman traced that polytechnical ideal to Francis Bacon, using higher education for material and social desires, not the fulfillment the human person through understanding his relationship to his Creator through natural theology and a philosophical habit of mind. That's why Theology must be a subject at a true university, not "religious studies", "the Bible as literature" or a survey course on world religions.

Newman saw that "the human being was being eliminated as a subject worthy of study"; Hutter sees now that we have "transhumanist outlook" as the liberal eugenicists today demand the freedom to design human beings, changing or enhancing "properties of one's own nature (intelligence, gender, emotions, body features, etc) with the assistance of biotechnology."

One of passages that affected me most, as I reflected on my incomplete education, was Hutter's substantial quotation of the Trappist monk Dom Eugene Boylan's This Tremendous Lover. In 1946 Boylan "made a keen observation about an emerging problem in the intellectual life that has only escalated since then": the use of imagination instead of abstract, metaphysical thought, substituting what might be for what is; non-being for Being. Boylan identified the results as false substitutions are made in thought and discourse:

• sentiment in principle for [instead of] argument
• particular for the general in argument
• metaphor in place of reality
• opinion for certainty
• prejudice for judgment
• quantity for quality
• matter for the ultimate reality

Even though I attended Catholic elementary and secondary schools, I received--in the late sixties and seventies--an education based on imagination and not abstract, metaphysical thought. Combined with the weak catechesis of that era, I might quote Paul Simon to say that "it's a wonder I can think at all"! except that I did discover John Henry Newman in 1979--receiving some good orientation and guidance--and did study the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the early nineties, married a good man, made good friends, and kept reading and studying Newman's life and works, thank God.

Epilogue: A Newmanian Theological Journey into the Catholic Church
*Moral Theology
*Justification, Church, and Eucharist
*Magisterium
*Encountering Mother Church
*Clarity

The epilogue is Hutter's conversion story from Lutheranism to Catholicism. In the context of the book, it demonstrates how he recognized that even teaching morality in a Lutheran seminary led him to base his instructor on his own private judgment and as a sovereign subject. There was no authority to guide him or his students or even his ecclesial community--not even Martin Luther himself! Even believing in the Real Presence of Jesus in Holy Communion could not result in any reverence for the matter of Holy Communion, as crumbs and bits of the Body of Christ were treated like mere bread, unless the pastor of a certain parish cared. Hutter notes the great influence of Pope St. John Paul II's encyclicals, Veritatis Splendor, Evangelium Vitae, and Ecclesia de Eucharistia. It's a great conversion story and a fitting end to the book as it demonstrates again Newman's influence today.

Selected Bibliography
Index of Names
General Index

The bibliography is excellent, and the footnotes, as I mentioned, are important to read. I recommend the book to anyone who is interested in the influence of Newman's teachings and writings on conscience, faith, ecclesiology and the Church's magisterium, and the idea of a university. I enjoyed and benefited from "hearing" Professor Hutter's voice of reason and experience throughout his discussion of these important subjects. It's a book I've had a hard time putting down even after I read the last word.

Book Review, Part I: John Henry Newman on Truth and Its Counterfeits

Reinhard Hutter's book on John Henry Newman was on the top of my wish list for 2020 new releases and I finally purchased my copy from Eighth Day Books on the Monday of Holy Week and read it before the Paschal Triduum began. It was worth the wait and I highly recommend it both to those who've studied Newman and those who are new to Newman and interested in certain religious controversies.

In my review here, I'm interspersing my comments throughout the table of contents. At the end of the review (in a second post), I'll state my overall conclusion about the book.

Subtitle: A Guide for Our Times

Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Prologue: Newman and Us
*Newman's Sojourn "from Shadows and Images into Truth"
*Structure, Scope, and Objective

Hutter establishes a cogent reason for writing this book proposing Newman as "A Guide for Our Times" noting that Newman saw three problems in his own century that would continue to develop and deepen unless the Catholic Church raised up champions against them: (1) the Spirit of Liberalism in religion; (2) the usurpation of religion and faith by rationalism; and (3) the unfettered rule of the principle of private judgment in religion. Hutter cites Newman's 1873 sermon "The Infidelity of the Future" as a prescient forecast of our situation now.

After providing an appropriately detailed biography of Newman, Hutter establishes the Structure, Scope, and Objective of the book: each chapter deals with a counterfeit of the true meaning of its term (conscience, faith, Newman's idea of the development of doctrine, and the university) and describes how Newman provides a defense of the truth. As Hutter notes, the main issue in each chapter is Newman's opposition to the principle of "private judgment" and the idea of a "sovereign subject", a person who, as Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in 1991 (Planned Parenthood v. Casey) can determine his or her own reality, which must be accepted by even those who know that reality is not true.

The real surprise to me was that Hutter establishes St. Thomas Aquinas as the main interlocutor to Newman in three of the four chapters. Since I have usually read that Newman was not a systematic theologian--more of a controversialist--this Newman-Aquinas connection was enlightening. As Hutter explains, Newman consulted Aquinas on conscience; Hutter thinks Aquinas help us understand what Newman says about faith more clearly; and Newman and Aquinas shared a vision of a university education.

Hutter cites other indications of Newman's regard for Aquinas, including evidence that he had read Aquinas while at Oriel College (thus as an Anglican); that he had Aquinas' complete works in his library and several other volumes by Aquinas; that there are annotations on different volumes, and that in 1878, after Pope Leo XIII issued his encyclical Aeternus Patris, re-establishing Aquinas as the Common Doctor of Catholic philosophy and theology, Newman was confident that he would not be found to be in conflict with Aquinas in his Grammar of Assent. Hutter also notes that Newman had been disappointed to learn that Aristotle and Aquinas were not in style in Rome while he studied for the Catholic priesthood after his conversion.

Hutter offers an excellent explanation for how the different methods of Newman and Aquinas complement each other. Newman's theological genius is psychological, phenomenological and controversial--he practices theology in a "context of discovery", defending Catholic teaching "not just in its notions but its reality"; Aquinas, the Common Doctor, best represents theology in the "context of justification", explaining Catholic teaching systematically, doctrinally, and speculatively. Newman and Aquinas have the same philosophical master: Aristotle.

Hutter then sets out to demonstrate how Newman addresses "today's most pressing issues from a Catholic perspective," starting with Conscience and Its Counterfeit.

Chapter 1. Conscience and Its Counterfeit
*John Henry Newman on Conscience and Its Counterfeit
*Aquinas on Synderesis and Conscientia
*Synderesis
*Conscience and Prudence
*The Erroneous Conscience
*Invincible Ignorance
*The Erroneous Conscience and the Counterfeit of Conscience
*Aquinas and Newman--Complementary Accounts of Conscience?
*Conscience and the Magisterium
*Freedom of Conscience as Freedom in the Truth
*Seven (7) Appendices on various aspects of Conscience, including notes on Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, Kant, and Fichte on definitions of Conscience

Because I've studied and even presented on Newman's defense of the true idea of Conscience against its Counterfeit of "self-will" none of what Hutter said about Newman's great contribution here was new to me, except for his discussion of how Aquinas' systematic explanation of synderesis as an innate habit and of conscience as an act, and how those terms, which Newman does not precisely use, back up Newman's explanation of conscience and how important that defense is to our true understanding of our moral choices, our freedom, and our obedience to Christ and His Church. The counterfeit of conscience, self-will, is a manifestation both of private judgment and liberalism in religious matters, making the individual the center of both the habit of choosing the good and the action of conscience deciding what is good. The individual determines what is good for herself--regardless of its objective value as revealed by God and His Church--and decides which action/choice will be good for herself and consistent with what she wants.

Chapter 2. Faith and Its Counterfeits
*Newman on Faith and Private Judgment
*Faith [Divine Faith]
*Private Judgment
*Protestantism and Private Judgment
*Divine Faith Is a Matter of Grace
*Thomas Aquinas on Divine Faith
*The Formal and the Material Object of Faith
*On Abjuring the Formal Object of "by which" of Faith
*Conclusion: Divine Faith and Its Counterfeit
*Appendix 1 (Newman's Studies in Rome; notes on Catholic Theologians on Faith)
*Appendix 2 (Certitude and Truth)

This chapter best exemplified how St. Thomas Aquinas' systematic theology of Divine Faith as one of the theological virtues, infused in our souls through the grace of baptism with water in the Name  of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit informs Newman's orthodox treatment of faith in a few Catholic sermons and other works. One of the main issues for Newman was that his conversion--becoming a Catholic years after he received the gift and grace of Divine Faith in baptism--was not a matter of private judgment and act of a "sovereign subject" deciding what was best for him, consistent with his own values, but was a response to truth. In his epilogue, Hutter cites an image Newman used of a man using a lantern to guide his way home in the dark--once inside his home, he doesn't need the lantern any more. This certainly conforms to Newman's statement in the Apologia pro Vita Sua that after becoming Catholic he did not need to form private judgments on the Church's doctrine because he had submitted to the living authority of God, "the oracle of God":

FROM the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this, I do not mean to say that my mind has been idle, or that I have given up thinking on theological subjects; but that I have had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in perfect peace and contentment; I never have had one doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any change, intellectual or moral, wrought in my mind. I was not conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental truths of Revelation, or of more self-command; I had not more fervour; but it was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to this day without interruption. 

Nor had I any trouble about receiving those additional articles, which are not found in the Anglican Creed. Some of them I believed already, but not any one of them was a trial to me. I made a profession of them upon my reception with the greatest ease, and I have the same ease in believing them now. I am far of course from denying that every article of the Christian Creed, whether as held by Catholics or by Protestants, is beset with intellectual difficulties; and it is simple fact, that, for myself, I cannot answer those difficulties. Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of Religion; I am as sensitive of them as any one; but I have never been able to see a connexion between apprehending those difficulties, however keenly, and multiplying them to any extent, and on the other hand doubting the doctrines to which they are attached. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. There of course may be difficulties in the evidence; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to the doctrines themselves, or to their relations with each other. A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem, of which the answer is or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or that a certain particular answer is the true one. Of all points of faith, the being of a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most power. 

People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation. . . . (Chapter 5. The Position of My Mind Since 1845)

Here I'd like to highlight Hutter's use of the the appendices at the end of these chapters. He uses them, like his rather extensive footnotes, to explore related subjects (the seven appendices at the end of Chapter 1 outline the various definitions of conscience by Protestant reformers and the speculations of Catholic theologians like Karl Rahner, SJ, and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger). The first Appendix to this chapter shows Newman's development in understanding Divine Faith through his studies of and notes from Catholic theologians like Suarez, Bellarmine, Lugo, Tanner, and Perrone (Jesuit, post-Tridentine). Thus Newman, who as an Anglican had thought of faith as "a higher reason and a gifted inference, came to understand the "process of supernatural faith" or the "analysis fidei" by 1853. As Hutter notes, almost twenty years later (1870), Newman would write the Grammar of Assent including a "compelling description of divine faith in its full and authentic Catholic scope", quoting Chapter 5, section 3, pages 152-153. In the second Appendix to this chapter, Hutter explores the Grammar of Assent further by presenting Newman's arguments on the Indefectibility of Certitude, section 2 of Chapter 7.

Since this is becoming a very long post, I'll break off here. For my comments the next two chapters, Hutter's Epilogue, and my summary review, please see my post next Tuesday (my late mother's birthday!), April 21:

Chapter 3. The Development of Doctrine and Its Counterfeits
*Development of Doctrine: The Voice of the Magisterium
*How Is an Authentic Development of Doctrine to be Discerned?
*Newman's Seven Notes of an Authentic Development of Doctrine
*A Test Case of Authentic Development of Doctrine: "Dignitatis Humanae"
*Conclusion: Two Counterfeits of the Authentic Development of Doctrine
*Appendix: Francisco Marin-Sola's Thomist Reception of Newman

Chapter 4. The University and Its Counterfeit
*University Education and (Natural) Theology as a Science
*The Indispensability of (Natural) Theology for University Education
*Becoming a Master of the Twofold "Logos", Thought and Word
*A Pragmatic Postscript
*Appendix: Metaphysics and Natural Theology

Epilogue: A Newmanian Theological Journey into the Catholic Church
*Moral Theology
*Justification, Church, and Eucharist
*Magisterium
*Encountering Mother Church
*Clarity

Selected Bibliography
Index of Names
General Index

King St. Louis of France

(c) Stephanie A. Mann, 2012

Today, August 25, would be the memorial of St. Louis, King of France if it were not a Sunday. He is one of the patron saints of France and his equestrian statue stands across from St. Joan of Arc on the facade of Sacre Coeur in Paris. St. Louis is also on the sanctoral calendar of the Episcopalian Church here in the USA:

(Apr. 25, 1214-Aug. 25, 1270). The patron saint for the Third Order of St. Francis. Born in Poissy, Louis IX became King of France on Nov. 29, 1226, and ruled until his death. He lived an austere and prayerful life, and embodied the highest ideals of medieval kingship. He sought to live a Franciscan life of poverty and self-denial in the midst of royal splendor. Louis built the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris as a reliquary for the Crown of Thorns which he acquired in 1239. He participated in crusades in 1248 and 1270. Louis endowed a number of religious houses and supported the theological college founded by Robert de Sorbon in 1257. While on crusade in 1270 he urged the Greek ambassadors to seek reunion with the Church of Rome. He was canonized by Pope Boniface VIII in 1297. Louis died in Tunis while on crusade. He is commemorated in the Episcopal calendar of the church year on Aug. 25.

St. Louis may be the patron saint for the Third Order of St. Francis, but he had contacts with Dominicans too. In particular, St. Thomas Aquinas. In his book about St. Thomas Aquinas, The Dumb Ox, Chesterton describes the famous encounter between the monarch and the friar:

It is a real case against conventional hagiography that it sometimes tends to make all saints seem to be the same. Whereas in fact no men are more different than saints; not even murderers. And there could hardly be a more complete contrast, given the essentials of holiness, than between St. Thomas and St. Louis. St. Louis was born a knight and a king; but he was one of those men in whom a certain simplicity, combined with courage and activity, makes it natural, and in a sense easy, to fulfil directly and promptly any duty or office, however official. He was a man in whom holiness and healthiness had no quarrel; and their issue was in action. He did not go in for thinking much, in the sense of theorising much. But, even in theory, he had that sort of presence of mind, which belongs to the rare and really practical man when he has to think. He never said the wrong thing; and he was orthodox by instinct. In the old pagan proverb about kings being philosophers or philosophers kings, there was a certain miscalculation, connected with a mystery that only Christianity could reveal. For while it is possible for a king to wish much to be a saint, it is not possible for a saint to wish very much to be a king. A good man will hardly be always dreaming of being a great monarch; but, such is the liberality of the Church, that she cannot forbid even a great monarch to dream of being a good man. But Louis was a straight-forward soldierly sort of person who did not particularly mind being a king, any more than he would have minded being a captain or a sergeant or any other rank in his army. Now a man like St. Thomas would definitely dislike being a king, or being entangled with the pomp and politics of kings; not only his humility, but a sort of subconscious fastidiousness and fine dislike of futility, often found in leisurely and learned men with large minds, would really have prevented him making contact with the complexity of court life. Also, he was anxious all his life to keep out of politics; and there was no political symbol more striking, or in a sense more challenging, at that moment, than the power of the King in Paris. . . .

Somehow they steered that reluctant bulk of reflection to a seat in the royal banquet hall; and all that we know of Thomas tells us that he was perfectly courteous to those who spoke to him, but spoke little, and was soon forgotten in the most brilliant and noisy clatter in the world: the noise of French talking. What the Frenchmen were talking about we do not know; but they forgot all about the large fat Italian in their midst, and it seems only too possible that he forgot all about them. Sudden silences will occur even in French conversation; and in one of these the interruption came. There had long been no word or motion in that huge heap of black and white weeds, like motley in mourning, which marked him as a mendicant friar out of the streets, and contrasted with all the colours and patterns and quarterings of that first and freshest dawn of chivalry and heraldry. The triangular shields and pennons and pointed spears, the triangular swords of the Crusade, the pointed windows and the conical hoods, repeated everywhere that fresh French medieval spirit that did, in every sense, come to the point. But the colours of the coats were gay and varied, with little to rebuke their richness; for St. Louis, who had himself a special quality of coming to the point, had said to his courtiers, "Vanity should be avoided; but every man should dress well, in the manner of his rank, that his wife may the more easily love him."

And then suddenly the goblets leapt and rattled on the board and the great table shook, for the friar had brought down his huge fist like a club of stone, with a crash that startled everyone like an explosion; and had cried out in a strong voice, but like a man in the grip of a dream, "And that will settle the Manichees!"

The palace of a king, even when it is the palace of a saint, has it conventions. A shock thrilled through the court, and every one felt as if the fat friar from Italy had thrown a plate at King Louis, or knocked his crown sideways. They all looked timidly at the terrible seat, that was for a thousand years the throne of the Capets: and many there were presumably prepared to pitch the big black-robed beggarman out of the window. But St. Louis, simple as he seemed, was no mere medieval fountain of honour or even fountain of mercy but also the fountain of two eternal rivers: the irony and the courtesy of France. And he turned to his secretaries, asking them in a low voice to take their tablets round to the sear of the absent-minded controversialist, and take a note of the argument that had just occurred to him; because it must be a very good one and he might forget it. . . . 

In the painting above by Niklaus Manuel, the two saints sit across the table from one another. There are two dark discs above their heads, which represent halos. Notice too the dog sitting under the table next to St. Louis's feet, while a dove (the Holy Spirit) inspires St. Thomas Aquinas!

St. Louis of France, pray for us!

St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!

Corpus Christi Thursday and Sunday

I have already celebrated the Solemnity of Corpus Christi: our Latin Mass (Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite) community and Blessed Sacrament Parish collaborated on a Thursday night Mass with a Eucharistic Procession and Benediction. The choir of Blessed Sacrament sang the Sine Nomine Mass of Palestrina--and will again this morning at the 11:00 Mass today--and we chanted St. Thomas Aquinas' great sequence for the feast during Mass and the Pange Lingua during the procession, concluding with Tantum Ergo back at the Altar. Father Thomas Hoisington offered Mass beautifully and offered a great homily on the Paschal Mystery: the Passion and the Mass.

Pope St. John Paul II expressed the Church's doctrine of and his own love for the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in his 2013 encyclical letter ECCLESIA DE EUCHARISTIA:

3. The Church was born of the paschal mystery. For this very reason the Eucharist, which is in an outstanding way the sacrament of the paschal mystery, stands at the centre of the Church's life. This is already clear from the earliest images of the Church found in the Acts of the Apostles: “They devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (2:42). The “breaking of the bread” refers to the Eucharist. Two thousand years later, we continue to relive that primordial image of the Church. At every celebration of the Eucharist, we are spiritually brought back to the paschal Triduum: to the events of the evening of Holy Thursday, to the Last Supper and to what followed it. The institution of the Eucharist sacramentally anticipated the events which were about to take place, beginning with the agony in Gethsemane. Once again we see Jesus as he leaves the Upper Room, descends with his disciples to the Kidron valley and goes to the Garden of Olives. Even today that Garden shelters some very ancient olive trees. Perhaps they witnessed what happened beneath their shade that evening, when Christ in prayer was filled with anguish “and his sweat became like drops of blood falling down upon the ground” (cf. Lk 22:44). The blood which shortly before he had given to the Church as the drink of salvation in the sacrament of the Eucharist, began to be shed; its outpouring would then be completed on Golgotha to become the means of our redemption: “Christ... as high priest of the good things to come..., entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb 9:11- 12).

4. The hour of our redemption. Although deeply troubled, Jesus does not flee before his “hour”. “And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour?' No, for this purpose I have come to this hour” (Jn 12:27). He wanted his disciples to keep him company, yet he had to experience loneliness and abandonment: “So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Mt 26:40- 41). Only John would remain at the foot of the Cross, at the side of Mary and the faithful women. The agony in Gethsemane was the introduction to the agony of the Cross on Good Friday. The holy hour, the hour of the redemption of the world. Whenever the Eucharist is celebrated at the tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem, there is an almost tangible return to his “hour”, the hour of his Cross and glorification. Every priest who celebrates Holy Mass, together with the Christian community which takes part in it, is led back in spirit to that place and that hour.

“He was crucified, he suffered death and was buried; he descended to the dead; on the third day he rose again”. The words of the profession of faith are echoed by the words of contemplation and proclamation: “This is the wood of the Cross, on which hung the Saviour of the world. Come, let us worship”. This is the invitation which the Church extends to all in the afternoon hours of Good Friday. She then takes up her song during the Easter season in order to proclaim: “The Lord is risen from the tomb; for our sake he hung on the Cross, Alleluia”.

5. “Mysterium fidei! - The Mystery of Faith!”. When the priest recites or chants these words, all present acclaim: “We announce your death, O Lord, and we proclaim your resurrection, until you come in glory”.

In these or similar words the Church, while pointing to Christ in the mystery of his passion,also reveals her own mystery: Ecclesia de Eucharistia. By the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost the Church was born and set out upon the pathways of the world, yet a decisive moment in her taking shape was certainly the institution of the Eucharist in the Upper Room. Her foundation and wellspring is the whole Triduum paschale, but this is as it were gathered up, foreshadowed and “concentrated' for ever in the gift of the Eucharist. In this gift Jesus Christ entrusted to his Church the perennial making present of the paschal mystery. With it he brought about a mysterious “oneness in time” between that Triduum and the passage of the centuries.

The thought of this leads us to profound amazement and gratitude. In the paschal event and the Eucharist which makes it present throughout the centuries, there is a truly enormous “capacity” which embraces all of history as the recipient of the grace of the redemption. This amazement should always fill the Church assembled for the celebration of the Eucharist. But in a special way it should fill the minister of the Eucharist. For it is he who, by the authority given him in the sacrament of priestly ordination, effects the consecration. It is he who says with the power coming to him from Christ in the Upper Room: “This is my body which will be given up for you This is the cup of my blood, poured out for you...”. The priest says these words, or rather he puts his voice at the disposal of the One who spoke these words in the Upper Room and who desires that they should be repeated in every generation by all those who in the Church ministerially share in his priesthood.

This morning, I'll attend Mass of the External Celebration of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi at the Spiritual Life Center. Professor Bradley Birzer, author of Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson and other works will speak on Russell Kirk and J.R.R. Tolkien on the last day of the Fourth Annual Catholic Culture Conference:

1:30 p.m. Bradley Birzer, presenting “The Christian Humanism of Russell Kirk—one of Catholicism’s greatest (but largely forgotten) 20th century figures”

A convert, Kirk went from spiritualism to Stoic Paganism to Catholicism in the first 45 years of his life. From 1964 to his death in 1994, he served the Church faithfully, in word, if not always in deed. He was, however, one of the single most charitable men of his age.

2:30 p.m. Break, and book signing/continued conversation with Dr. Birzer

3:00 p.m. Bradley Birzer, presenting “The Inklings and J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythology”

Most of you know something about J.R.R. Tolkien and his monumental work, The Lord of the Rings, and the literary impact of his friendship with C.S. Lewis and the rest of the “Inklings”. Below the surface, however, there is much in Tolkien’s work that lies hidden to the casual reader. In this lecture, Dr. Birzer will explore Tolkien’s mythology as a Catholic answer to the terrorist ideologies of the previous century.

Belloc (and Chesterton) on St. Thomas Aquinas

Remember that Anna Mitchell and I will discuss Belloc's views of Descartes and Pascal this morning around 7:45 a.m. Eastern//6:45 a.m. Central on the Son Rise Morning Show. Listen live here.

In the course of his discussion of Rene Descartes, Belloc mentions that Descartes did not deal with the proof of things outside of ourselves. In doing so, Belloc cites the names of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas:

There is no rational process by which the reality of the external universe can be discovered; all we know is that it can be confidently affirmed. Aristotle, who might be called reason itself; St. Thomas, whose whole process was that of beginning with a doubt, and examining all that there was to be said for that doubt before the denial of it and the corresponding certitude could be arrived at, both postulate this second truth. Not only am I, I, but that which is not myself is just as real as I am, and what is more, can be and is apprehended by myself. 

That is, like all true philosophy, common sense. Your plain man, who is made in the image of God and who, so long as his reason and conscience are not warped, is on the right lines, has no patience with any denial of it. The whole of human society takes it for granted and must take it for granted. The witness in a Court of Justice, the man conducting his own affairs, the simplest activities of daily life, takes for granted as absolutely certain, not only the external universe in which we live, but our own power of apprehending it.

In his 1937 book, The Crisis of [Our] Civilization, based upon his lectures at Fordham University, Belloc explains St. Thomas Aquinas' place in Church History and philosophy:

The XIIIth century was that moment in which the high Middle Ages reached their summit. It was that moment in which the Catholic culture came, in the civic sense of the word “ culture,” to maturity. It was probably the supreme moment of our blood, at any rate one of the very greatest moments. Never had we had such a well-founded society before, never have we since had any society so well founded or so much concerned with justice. A proof, if proof were needed, of the greatness of that time is the scale of the chief public characters, already named: St. Louis the King, Ferdinand of Castile, St. Dominic and St. Francis, with their new orders of friars, Edward I of England, and, in philosophy, which determines all, the towering name of St. Thomas Aquinas. He established during that great time a body of coordinated doctrine and philosophy which no one had yet possessed. The scale of his work is on a par with its cultural value. He seemed to have put his seal upon the civilization which he adorned, and, through his establishment of right reason in philosophy, his marriage of Catholicism with the Aristotelian wisdom, to have set up a structure that would endure for ever and give a norm to our civilization.

In his great study of St. Thomas Aquinas, Belloc's friend G.K. Chesterton describes this "marriage of Catholicism with the Aristotelian wisdom":

The Thomist movement in metaphysics, like the Franciscan movement in morals and manners, was an enlargement and a liberation, it was emphatically a growth of Christian theology from within; it was emphatically not a shrinking of Christian theology under heathen or even human influences. The Franciscan was free to be a friar, instead of being bound to be a monk. But he was more of a Christian, more of a Catholic, even more of an ascetic. So the Thomist was free to be an Aristotelian, instead of being bound to be an Augustinian. But he was even more of a theologian; more of an orthodox theologian; more of a dogmatist, in having recovered through Aristotle the most defiant of all dogmas, the wedding of God with Man and therefore with Matter. Nobody can understand the greatness of the thirteenth century, who does not realise that it was a great growth of new things produced by a living thing. In that sense it was really bolder and freer than what we call the Renaissance, which was a resurrection of old things discovered in a dead thing. In that sense medievalism was not a Renascence, but rather a Nascence. It did not model its temples upon the tombs, or call up dead gods from Hades. It made an architecture as new as modern engineering; indeed it still remains the most modern architecture. Only it was followed at the Renaissance by a more antiquated architecture. In that sense the Renaissance might be called the Relapse. Whatever may be said of the Gothic and the Gospel according to St. Thomas, they were not a Relapse. It was a new thrust like the titanic thrust of Gothic engineering; and its strength was in a God who makes all things new. 

 In a word, St. Thomas was making Christendom more Christian in making it more Aristotelian. This is not a paradox but a plain truism, which can only be missed by those who may know what is meant by an Aristotelian, but have simply forgotten what is meant by a Christian. As compared with a Jew, a Moslem, a Buddhist, a Deist, or most obvious alternatives, a Christian means a man who believes that deity or sanctity has attached to matter or entered the world of the senses. Some modern writers, missing this simple point, have even talked as if the acceptance of Aristotle was a sort of concession to the Arabs; like a Modernist vicar making a concession to the Agnostics. They might as well say that the Crusades were a concession to the Arabs as say that Aquinas rescuing Aristotle from Averrhoes was a concession to the Arabs. The Crusaders wanted to recover the place where the body of Christ had been, because they believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was a Christian place. St. Thomas wanted to recover what was in essence the body of Christ itself; the sanctified body of the Son of Man which had become a miraculous medium between heaven and earth. And he wanted the body, and all its senses, because he believed, rightly or wrongly, that it was a Christian thing. It might be a humbler or homelier thing than the Platonic mind; that is why it was Christian. St. Thomas was, if you will, taking the lower road when he walked in the steps of Aristotle. So was God, when He worked in the workshop of Joseph.

 

To return to Belloc's views of Descartes and Pascal, Belloc sums them up thus:

. . . these two great men stand for the reaction upon Catholicism as a whole produced by the upheaval of the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century — all that confused movement which has been called the twin warring brothers, Reformation and Renaissance. And when we consider all the effect of them, the way in which Descartes has led to sceptical rationalism, Pascal to a contempt for doctrine and a sort of cloud over the mind in which men lost the Faith, the most remarkable thing still is that both men remained firmly of the Faith, lived in it and died in it. They both were living proofs that the Gates of Hell had not prevailed and that the Church had proved its power to survive. 

For my own part the two things that stand out most vividly in the case of either man are these: Of Descartes, that he had the humility, the faith and the devotion to make the pilgrimage to Loretto; of Pascal, the splendour of his death.

The Holy House of Loreto is in Italy and Descartes went there in 1623. Pascal suffered from great pains in his stomach for years. When he died on August 19, 1662 in Paris his last words were: "May God never abandon me." 

Popery in 1908: The Eucharistic Congress

In the United States of America, at least, many Catholics are celebrating the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ. I hope that we all sing the entire Sequence by St. Thomas Aquinas, hear an excellent homily, and participate in a great outdoor procession, Adoration and Benediction of the Most Holy Blessed Sacrament, singing Aquinas' other great Eucharistic hymns, the Salutoris Hostia and Tantum Ergo. Exposition and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is a great traditional devotion of the Catholic Church. The Real Presence, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the source and summit, the center of our Sacramental life.

Before the Reformation in England, Corpus Christi was a day of great ritual, with processions comparable to Holy Thursday and the performance of the Mystery Plays, which enacted salvation history from Creation to the Second Coming. This Feast was introduced in England during the early 14th century (1318) with the Office by St. Thomas Aquinas, but it gained almost immediate popularity among the English, according to both Eamon Duffy and Miri Rubin. The English expressed their devotion to the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist with the formation of Corpus Christi Guilds to prepare for the annual celebrations. The cycle of Mystery plays required months of preparation and fundraising for the decorations. Anthony Esolen interprets the Wakefield cycle of plays here. Corpus Christi College in Cambridge was founded by such a guild in 1352.

Adoration and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was essential to pre-Reformation Catholic spirituality in England. The Corpus Christi was the center of the entire Paschal Mystery of Incarnation, Redemption and Resurrection. For the individual Christian, Christ's Real Presence in Mass and in adoration outside of Mass, symbolized their participation in that Mystery--even though they in the normal course of the liturgical year received Holy Communion rarely.

Of course, this all ended after the English Reformation and was revived among Catholics in England only after Emancipation in 1829 and Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850. In September of 1908, a great Eucharistic Congress was held in London. The Spectator editorial page commented on the event, raising some concerns:

IT is typical of the national detachment from the practice and institutions of the Church of Rome that the Eucharistic Congress now being held at Westminster should come upon us as a novelty, and that its purport should require elaborate explanation. "An International Eucharistic Congress," we are told officially, "is an assembly of Bishops, priests, and lay-folk from all parts of the world who meet together to proclaim their belief in the Real Presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, to assert the supremacy of the Holy Eucharist in human life, to discuss all matters connected with the Great Mystery, and to endeavour to promote and to develop practical devotion to the great Gift of our Lord's love." The present is the eighteenth of these annual gatherings, and its purely religious aspect is emphasised in the statement of Cardinal Vannutelli to a representative of the Times. "The members of the Congress are not assembling in England with any political intent. They come with an object which is exclusively religious,—to affirm with all simplicity their faith in the Eucharist, recalling the time when that faith was universal in England." It is impossible to deny, however, that this assemblage of princes of the Church and of lesser members of the Roman hierarchy from all parts of the world wears the appearance of a demonstration, and almost of a challenge, which excites apprehension in respectable quarters, and has given rise to regrettable effusions of bigotry in others. An unfounded idea has been disseminated that the Congress is a move in the campaign for the restoration of the temporal power of the Papacy, and for the re-establishment of direct diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Others regard it as a great proselytizing agency. The visit to England of a Papal Legate, after an interval of three centuries and a half, cannot fail to recall memories of Reginald Pole and his disastrous Mission of Reconciliation; while the triumphant progress of Cardinal Vannutelli from Dover to Westminster, the cheering crowds in the streets, the hoisting of the Papal flag as the Legate crossed the threshold of his archiepiscopal host, have all combined to administer a series of shocks to a people by temperament and conviction distrustful of anything that smacks of "Popery." . . . 

Since Cardinal Pole had not visited England for 350, who had any living memory of it? What immediate memories were there to recall? What they had was the memory of the hatred of Catholicism.

The Spectator editorial then goes on to comment on the progress that Catholics had made in England since Emancipation in 1829 and indeed the progress English Protestants had made in accepting the progress that Catholics had made. But then, the editors note one problem: the public procession of the Blessed Sacrament:

One jarring note, and one only, has been struck. The solemn closing of the Congress on Sunday afternoon is to be marked by a "Great Procession of the Blessed Sacrament," which is to follow the celebration of Pontifical vespers and to precede the " Te Deum " and "Benediction". The route has been carefully chosen in the quieter streets round Westminster Cathedral, and has received the approval of the police authorities. Unfortunately, however, such a procession "falls within the mischief" of the twenty-sixth section of the Catholic Emancipation Act, which subjects all persons taking part in it to a substantial fine. The Protestant societies are up in arms, are appealing to the Sovereign to forbid it by Proclamation, and are calling upon the Ministry and upon the head of the Metropolitan Police to enforce the statute. The law is the law, and we do not deny that it is on the side of the protest. But the Protestant position is so safe in this country, so deep-rooted in the convictions of the people, that we should deeply regret open unpleasantness in the streets, not only as a discourtesy to our visitors, but as something like a declaration of weakness,—a distrust in our great tradition of toleration. . . .

Read the rest there. You may also peruse this record of the presentations, homilies, and addresses given during the course of the Congress here.

John Senior's Life and Career: Realism and Christian Culture

I am not an alumna of the Pearson Integrated Humanities Program (PIHP) at the University of Kansas, but I know alumni of the program. A friend gave me a copy of this book about one of the three professors who developed and taught the program, John Senior and the Restoration of Realism by Father Francis Bethel, OSB, a monk of Clear Creek Abbey. Father Bethel is an alumnus of the program, and just one of the PIHP students who visited Fontgombault Abbey in France and became a monk or discerned a priestly vocation.

Father Bethel has written an intellectual biography of one of his teachers and mentors, demonstrating how John Senior put together his appreciation of reality in nature with an acceptance of the reality of things and the recognition that truth exists and can be known and must be acted upon. The interesting fact is that he'd lost that connection in the first place. Senior had been a cowboy and had experienced hard work and reality, but his interest in the Symbolist poets and Eastern philosophy and the occult led him for awhile into what he later called the Perennial Heresy, relativism and skepticism. Then he read St. Thomas Aquinas and rediscovered Realism: that what is is real and true. Something can't be both true and untrue: it is or it isn't, and we can and should accept this fact. That's the Perennial Philosophy of Realism he rediscovered and wanted to restore.

The book could have been titled John Senior and the Liberal Arts or John Senior and The Idea of a University Education, but Father Bethel's choice of title is appropriate because Senior's discovery of Realism led him to more than a career as an academic professor and one of the founders of the PIHP. It led him to a way of life, and it led him to Jesus and His Church. It led him to live with his wife and children in a certain way, owning a ranch and working it even as he taught at the University of Wyoming, always staying close to real things: the land, animals, books, musical instruments, etc. Instead of watching television--they did not own a TV set--they read books. His wife raised Afghan Hounds, elegant dogs, but dogs all the same that bark at inopportune times.

Browsing the index, I noticed the words "The Newman School of Catholic Thought" and found out more about John Senior's work at the Newman Center in Laramie, Wyoming and his contact with Father Charles Taylor. Father Taylor was one of the presenters at the 1979 Newman School of Catholic Thought I attended as a sophomore at WSU. At least one PIHP student attended that week (Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska, who wrote one of the blurbs for this book).

Father Bethel uses Senior's books, The Death of  Christian Culture and The Restoration of  Christian Culture to outline the problem and Senior's solution. He notes that Senior never sought political solutions to the crisis, but instead thought education and formation was the answer. Bethel describes Senior's melancholic temperament, his vast reading--and its limitations--and elements of his teaching style, summing him up as "a good man with a gift for communicating his subject." (p. 129)

In the heart of the book (Part II and Part III), describing in detail how Senior developed his plan of attack on the Perennial Heresy his students had accepted, Bethel shows himself an apt pupil of his master. He doesn't just tell the reader what Senior found in, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, to inform his education theories and methods, he explains what Aquinas and Aristotle said and how Senior interpreted and used them in the formation of his theory of gradual, systematic education based upon opening the student's mind to nature through gymnastics and to the life of the mind through music (poetry and memory). Bethel explores Senior's understanding of the Four Modes of Knowledge in depth: Poetic, Rhetorical, Dialectic, and Scientific. He also describes Senior's proposal for a boy's education, found in an unpublished manuscript, "The Restoration of Innocence."

Part IV offers insights into the famed PIHP and its demise. The crucial element in attacks against the program was that so many students were becoming Catholics--and even monks--so that dedication to the Truth and believing that education should teach the Truth meant that the students were being proselytized or worse, brainwashed. Even though Senior, Nelick, and Quinn were cleared of those charges of trying to convert their students, the lack of diversity in the program--opposing views to Truth were presented--led University of Kansas officials to destroy the PIHP. Father Bethel notes that there was a later revival of interest in what Senior and Quinn taught in in the early 1980's, but then Senior's health (heart) problems brought about retirement. Senior and PIHP alumni kept in touch; he wrote the two books on Christian Culture, and there was a big reunion in 1995, John Senior died on April 8, 1999, when he was 77 years old. He and his wife were praying the Rosary.

Father Bethel bravely takes on his mentor's ecclesial wanderings in the post-Vatican II Catholic world. With misgivings about the rather Jansenist elements of the community, Senior attended what we now call the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite at churches with Society of Saint Pius X priests (although Bethel is reticent about where Senior attended Mass according to the Missal of 1962), even when he had access to the same Mass said by priests of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, a Clerical Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical right approved of and supported by Pope John Paul II and then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Bethel is sympathetic to Senior's plight, but believes that he should have attended the FSSP. There is a strange comment about Senior's confessions to "priests in obedience to Rome." Father Bethel comments, "This clearly suggests that this confessors did not judge him to be sinning by attending Society Masses." (p. 373) I'm not sure that it suggests anything, clearly or not, since we don't know what he confessed (and can't/shouldn't because of the Seal of the Confessional).

I do wish that in the chapters discussing and citing mostly the books on Christian Culture that page number citations were used in the text, instead of being relegated to end notes at the back of the book. I'd prefer end notes for each chapter when they are mostly comprised of "Ibid." and a page number. There are some problems with the bibliography formatting (on page 428, the second work by Chesterton, using the spacer for the author's name, is listed first and two of John Paul II's works are also listed first with the spacer coming last; also on page 429, two author's entries seem to have run together ("Newman, John Henry" and "Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace"). Those are quibbles, however, and don't detract from the great achievement of this book, which should inspire parents and educators to follow John Senior's example and advice.

Indeed, Anthony Esolen, who recently left Providence College to teach and lead The Center for the Restoration of Catholic Culture at Thomas More College in Merrimack, New Hampshire (where this book was published) seems poised to do so:

Imagine then dances in a great ballroom built just for such a thing; and imagine that the young people learn to dance as their grandparents may have done, with innocence and the natural attraction that boys and girls are meant to have for one another.

Imagine that you get people from the community who can play the fiddle, attracted despite themselves to the beauty of what is normal.
 People used to play musical instruments, for the pleasure and mirth of it, and not for pursuing a career.

Imagine a place for regular concerts, big and small, “professional” and amateur, by people with gray hair or by little ones with cowlicks or braids. All of the arts have gone sour; poetry, the first and highest art of man, has degenerated into political posturing, in verse without form and meter.

Gymnastics and Music, just as John Senior said.

Once you have read this book, you should read The Death of Christian Culture and The Restoration of Christian Culture. Both are available from Eighth Day Books.

Chesterton on St. Thomas Aquinas's Eucharistic Poetry

In chapter five of his study of St. Thomas Aquinas ("The Real Life of St. Thomas), Chesterton tries to convey some of the mystery of the saint in spite of the efforts of hagiography. He highlights the great vision St. Thomas had when Jesus asked him, "You have written well of me, Thomas. What reward would you have for your labor?":

Nobody supposes that Thomas Aquinas, when offered by God his choice among all the gifts of God, would ask for a thousand pounds, or the Crown of Sicily, or a present of rare Greek wine. But he might have asked for things that he really wanted: and he was a man who could want things; as he wanted the lost manuscript of St. Chrysostom. He might have asked for the solution of an old difficulty; or the secret of a new science; or a flash of the inconceivable intuitive mind of the angels, or any one of a thousand things that would really have satisfied his broad and virile appetite for the very vastness and variety of the universe. The point is that for him, when the voice spoke from between the outstretched arms of the Crucified, those arms were truly opened wide, and opening most gloriously the gates of all the worlds; they were arms pointing to the east and to the west, to the ends of the earth and the very extremes of existence. They were truly spread out with a gesture of omnipotent generosity; the Creator himself offering Creation itself; with all its millionfold mystery of separate beings, and the triumphal chorus of the creatures. That is the blazing background of multitudinous Being that gives the particular strength, and even a sort of surprise, to the answer of St. Thomas, when he lifted at last his head and spoke with, and for, that almost blasphemous audacity which is one with the humility of his religion; "I will have Thyself." Or, to add the crowning and crushing irony to this story, so uniquely Christian for those who can really understand it, there are some who feel that the audacity is softened by insisting that he said, "Only Thyself."

Because G.K. Chesterton was a poet himself he appreciated St. Thomas's poetry in the hymns and sequence for the Feast of Corpus Christi:

The one exception permitted to him was the rare but remarkable output of his poetry. All sanctity is secrecy; and his sacred poetry was really a secretion; like the pearl in a very tightly closed oyster. He may have written more of it than we know; but part of it came into public use through the particular circumstance of his being asked to compose the office for the Feast of Corpus Christi: a festival first established after the controversy to which he had contributed, in the scroll that he laid on the altar. It does certainly reveal an entirely different side of his genius; and it certainly was genius. As a rule, he was an eminently practical prose writer; some would say a very prosaic prose writer. He maintained controversy with an eye on only two qualities; clarity and courtesy. And he maintained these because they were entirely practical qualities; affecting the probabilities of conversion. But the composer of the Corpus Christi service was not merely what even the wild and woolly would call a poet; he was what the most fastidious would call an artist. His double function rather recalls the double activity of some great Renaissance craftsman, like Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci, who would work on the outer wall, planning and building the fortifications of the city; and then retire into the inner chamber to carve or model some cup or casket for a reliquary. The Corpus Christi Office is like some old musical instrument, quaintly and carefully inlaid with many coloured stones and metals; the author has gathered remote texts about pasture and fruition like rare herbs; there is a notable lack of the loud and obvious in the harmony; and the whole is strung with two strong Latin lyrics. Father John O'Connor has translated them with an almost miraculous aptitude; but a good translator will be the first to agree that no translation is good; or, at any rate, good enough. How are we to find eight short English words which actually stand for "Sumit unus, sumunt mille; quantum isti, tantum ille"? How is anybody really to render the sound of the "Pange Lingua", when the very first syllable has a clang like the clash of cymbals?

Several years ago I highlighted those hymns for Catholic Exchange. St. Thomas Aquinas also wrote great prayers for before and after receiving Holy Communion.

The painting above is by Peter Paul Rubens, depicting St. Thomas among the other "Defenders of the Eucharist." More about the painting here.

St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!