Pilgrim in a barren land

I've needed this Lent like a bullet to the brain. But it is better to live it than to try to evade it. In fact I don't think you can avoid Lent, it is simply there, in the air, like the faint smell of Spring. The voice calling for repentance and conversion is real and speaks to us all, we can choose to block our ears but it doesn't make it go away. We all must admit that we are journeying through a wilderness, other creatures may be a comfort but they are also a distraction, we have to confront ourselves alone before God if we are to be of any use to Him.

The only thing is, I was already in a wilderness before Lent:

And I said: who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest?
Lo, I have gone far off flying away; and I abode in the wilderness.
I waited for him that hath saved me from pusillanimity of spirit, and a storm.

Psalm 54:7-9

The wilderness is a blessing, you have to confront yourself, you have to survive, you lose all your feelings yet fill your heart. Your senses are both mortified and heightened at the same time.

Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.

Hosea 2:14

So what is new about my Lenten wilderness?

Sheer, unremitting, backbreaking, hard, hard slog.

Body, mind and spirit are being pushed to the limits. There is something lurking in the shadows wanting me to fail, there is a knife edge off which I must not fall. I have no sense of balance and my reliance on God is absolute, yet I'm deaf, dumb and blind in prayer.....everything is an act of will, there is no sense. This is not a will trapped in desolation and feeling abandonment, it is a will acting out of duty, a promise I made many years ago, an act of sheer blind obedience.

Please, Lord, when Lent is over, can I have an Easter this year? Or do I have to keep on waiting......

Thy will be done.

Stalactites, potholes and debt

A recent sermon started with a quote from Blessed John Henry Newman which says that the only sign of life is growth. Now, I do not wish to contradict the great man, I haven't seen the quote and I don't know the context of the quote. However, had any of my younger pupils been in the congregation they may had chirped up that Miss says there are actually seven signs of life. They may have even been brave enough to be able to contradict the statement made at the start of the sermon. Often I will ask then to name things that are definitely not alive but which grow. Some good, if slightly precocious answers that I have had back have been stalactites, potholes and debt. And there is no arguing with any of that.

So the seven signs of life are:
Growth,nutrition,respiration (getting energy from food),excretion, reproduction, sensitivity and movement.
All seven need to take place for something to be classed as a living organism.

I thought it may be a profitable meander to see how these fit into the Spiritual Life.

Here I'd say growth in the spiritual life quite simply depends on a good balance of the other six taking place. So let me take a personal look at the other six:

nutrition
The spiritual life needs feeding, primarily by the Word; through the Sacraments of the Church, through Scripture, through inspired pious writing and the holy and heroic actions of the saints.

Respiration (getting energy from food)
You can read and watch all you like, but unless it involves some sort of "chemical reaction" within you, you will not profit from it. This is grace. This involves practicing the presence of God. If it isn't happening a sort of "spiritual indigestion" takes place and the spiritual nutrition is totally unsatisfying and possible even wasted. Spiritual aridity, on the other hand, is simply spiritual respiration taking place but without the awareness of the soul that it is having any effect, it is often necessary (for a while) but very disconcerting and even distressing, a bit like taking an anesthetic or a medicine with nasty side effects.

Excretion
There are waste products in one's spiritual life. There is a time to discard some of the elements of a childish faith to adopt a deeper more mature union with God. I'd possibly argue that (for example) whilst statues and rosaries are vitally important to our faith, sentimental attachment to a particular statue or rosary really ought to be ditched. This doesn't mean we don't care for such objects, especially if they have been blessed, but if they break, we shouldn't cry over them. Sentimentality is necessary, but like roughage, it ought to pass straight through.

Reproduction
If your spiritual life isn't producing fruit in other souls, then it is not as it should be. And if you are not reproducing Christ in your own spiritual life (in what ever small inadequate way) then your spiritual life is not healthy either.

Sensitivity
The ability to respond generously to the inspirations of God and to the needs of others is a sure sign of a healthy spiritual life.

Movement
A static spiritual life is one that consists of routine that does not impinge on how you behave when doing everything else that you do, is a dead spiritual life. Movement involves a desire to move in a particular direction and also actual movement instigated through grace. The movement should be fluid and confident (faith)and accompanied by a complete distrust of self (and ones own ideas and feelings) as the path gets rockier.

So there you have it....my seven signs of a spiritual life, based on a biology lesson for 11 year olds.

Oh how the mind wanders during sermons, sorry Fr R.

Angels and Demons

A bit of a rambling post from yours truly this week but all on the same theme:

Firstly, my Catholic witness in my place of employment has to be subtle and subversive. So I was overjoyed when some pupils, before performing in the school play, decided to pray to their guardian angels, and later tell me that it worked. I've also been encouraging prayers to St Anthony for a lost (very expensive) make-up bag, but either the girl has not taken on board my suggestion or St Anthony thinks she'd be better off without it and its contents.

A friend of mine that I see for tea about once a month told me a disturbing story from her parish about a formidable and strangely influential woman in her parish. Apparently, this woman thinks the Prayer to St Michael is theologically incorrect and that we ought to be praying for Satan and his fallen angels. I really have to ask if this woman is serving the Church. She'd get an earful from me if she started spouting that nonsense in front of me. I do wonder if Satan is strangely touched by her misguided concern for him or if he is just laughing at the damage she could do to the Church with her beliefs?

In my wanderings to Catholic churches far from here and far from orthodoxy, I heard a sermon that has left me very puzzled and for which I cannot find a suitable response. The sermon was about the devil and St Michael. The priest said that as only God is omnipotent, and the angels are not, this means that the devil can only be bothering one person at a time as he can only be in one place at any one time. Likewise with St Michael. Take this sermon's theme to its logical conclusion and it is the same with the saints; don't bother asking a popular saint for their intercession unless you are prepared to join a very long queue. Oh it is all stuff and nonsense, heaven exists outside of space and time, the supernatural is just that; supernatural. The saints and angels can do what they want for any soul that requests. Omnipotence is something else; it is more than the supernatural with the dial turned up to 11.

Lastly, I have been debating with another friend why there were so many demons around the place when Our Lord was walking this earth. We have several possible suggestions:

• The Holy Land was just the baddest, evilest of places 2000 years ago. (We're not convinced by this argument)
  
• The demons were necessary to give witness to Christ to show his dominion over everything.
• The very bad is always attracted to and seeks out the supremely good.
  
• There are just as many demons around today, but we are cr*p at recognising them and few have (or realise they have) the authority to deal with them.
• They weren't really demons but psychological disturbances, the Gospel stories are just stories about healing. (this is the rubbish some of us were brought up to believe and ought to be consigned to the Archives of Oblivion)

What do you think?

Surge, amica mea

On the feat of St Scholasitca, yesterday, Father reminded us of how St Benedict had the vision of his sister's soul ascending to heaven as a dove.

The folllowing came to mind:

Surge, amica mea, speciosa mea
et veni, columba mea
in foraminibus petrae
in caverna maceriae.

Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
and come;
my dove in the cleft of the rock,
in the hollow places in the wall.

Not because I know the Song of Songs that well, but because of the thing of beauty it has been fashioned into. Dietrich Buxtehude and St Bernard of Clairvaux joined forces to produce a profound meditation on the wound in the side of Our Lord. And maybe no coincidence, but the text forms the gradual of today's Mass for the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.




Just beautiful, just beautiful

Hail redeeming side,
where is concealed sweet honey;
where is laid out the vigour of love,
and whence surges forth the fountain of blood
that cleanses soiled hearts.

Behold I approach thee
-save me, Jesus, if I transgress-
my forehead bowed down,
to thee, however I come of my own accord,
to examine thy wounds.

At the hour of my death let my breath
enter, O Jesus, thy side,
that expiring it may go to thee,
lest the fierce lion invade it,
and may live eternally in thee.

Ad Jesum per Mariam

...the future?

Just what are the current threats to the Church from within?

I'm asking this question, because it interests me. And as blogs are entirely self-serving, here are my answers to my own question. I ask the question because whilst I know the "gates of Hell will not prevail", I'm sure that because the Church is too stubbornly human the "walls of Jerusalem" are not as strong as they ought to be. Souls are being lost and their blood is on our hands. This is my personal Anglo-centric list and you are free to disagree with it.

• The right wing politics that is dominating the Church is a threat. Whilst naturally Catholics favour conservatism, this doesn't mean Catholics have to be Conservative. The Church needs Christian Socialists and Tory-Anarchists (but probably not greens or liberals). The Republican/Conservative self-righteous alignment of many Catholics under the banner of "traditional family values" is masking an "I'm alright Jack" mentality which flies in the face of what we ought to believe in.
• The fact most of us are luke warm or asleep is perhaps the biggest threat.
• Agendas are a threat. If we engage too much with the standards by which the world measures its own, we become too much like the world. Why class people as heterosexual or homosexual, for example? There are simply human beings made by God and stained by sin. Why catalogue souls? Crawling out if sin demands detachment from all labels. The only orientation needed to towards the crucifix.
  
• The Catholic pro-life movement may be a threat. It is too political (but it has to be). It is too much of a cause, it is too much of a thing, it is too easily reduced to "sloganeering". The Church is not about things. The pro-life movement is a good thing, it does astonishingly good work BUT it ought to be ecumenical/inter-faith in all its endeavours, but from a standpoint of sound Catholic doctrine. If the Catholic Church is seen as just a series of good causes, then we're scuppered.
  
• Our invisibility is a threat.
• The near collapse of working class Catholicism especially in the North of England is a worry and a threat to the dynamics of Catholicism in this country.
  
• Liberal-Traddie polarisation is a threat.
• A lack of obedience is a threat. Most of this caused by a lack of leadership from those to whom obedience ought to be directed, through love of Christ and His Church.
• The nouvelle theologie remains a threat. The Church already had a sound theology of Grace, a new one was not needed. Theologians should not be left to explain Nature, they should leave that to Scientists. The Grace/Nature mishmash of the Nouvelle Theoleogie is confused, complicated and incoherent and plays into the hands of those who wish to downplay Christ on Calvary, the role of the Sacraments and the nature of the priesthood.

So there you have it. My little blog on the periphery of a very unimportant corner of the blogworld has had its say.

I'll end with a quote from Hebrews 12:14-17

Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fail to obtain the grace of God; that no "root of bitterness" spring up and cause trouble and by it the many become defiled; that no one be immoral or irreligious like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal.

Just asking....

Err, what does one do with one's Epiphany chalk once one has made the inscription over the door?

The chalk was blessed, was it blessed solely for the purpose of writing 10+C+M+B+12 and then ceased to be a blessed object or does it remain a blessed object?

I have 3 pieces now (3 year's worth) and am just wondering.



Not that I'm likely to start using it at school, though I am the proud owner of the last remaining blackboard in the place.

Vocation (again)

I’m still here, sort of.

Ollie Bear is having a very long think at the moment and is far too busy to post. As for me, I’ve given up thinking, so blogging is difficult, you need to think to write, and I just can’t think. Indeed the less I engage my brain the better, I’m finding.It isn’t that it has stopped working. It is currently being kept entertained by a good book on the 100 Years War and another one on quantum physics. No, the old mental faculties are intact despite the insulin and sugar issues. I think it is my reasoning skills that are totally on the blink.

One thing is getting me down; I’m really not lonely, but having to keep fending off all the people who keep saying to me that I must be feeling lonely, is making me feel rather isolated. On the surface, I suppose my existence looks a little lonely, but it simply isn’t. I know too many people to never get a smile out of them when I’m out and about, I don’t want much more than a smile, I don’t need much more than a smile. I have Christ and the Church; Holy Mass at least 5 times a week is a real boon, plus Confession whenever I want it, Exposition, and endless chats with my friends in the Church Triumphant. I also have some most excellent long dead priests for company, Tanquerey and Dr Challoner’s translation of the Psalms are by my side each night. I have a habit of waking up as strange hours, sometimes full of joy (in which case I’ll read some psalms), love for my fellow man (psalms again) or blinded by doubt (Tanquerey to the rescue). I’m soon back in dreamless sleep and wake refreshed. It is very hard to explain to anyone that I don’t feel lonely, I feel overwhelmingly good.

Work is a pain, I don’t like my job, well I don’t like it if I think about it. This is another reason to stop thinking. It is vital that I keep busy (another reason to not blog), and work has a way of filling the hours when there is no laundry to do.

You see dear reader, I am feeling a real sense of a burgeoning vocation, and I will say no more about what that will entail just yet, other than it isn’t the cloister for me. Vocation is so deeply personal (myself and Christ Crucified are in deep unspoken dialogue). Vocation isn’t all sweetness either, there are long encircling shadows and vast dark empty chasms to traverse…and vocation can’t be reached by the light of reason, only the light of faith, hope and love.

Total loving silent stillness
The marriage of longing and union
Desire and understanding
Lightness and depth
Solitude and communion
Prepared for now
Awaiting in eternity.


Is not the iconostasis a true image of vocation?

Thread bear

Ollie Bear here again..

We were woken this morning at , as I think you say “stupid o’clock”, by Rita making her way to the Rorate Mass at the Oratory. Now she’s got her head stuck in “The Catholic”, the quarterly newspaper from Papa Stronsay, and is unlikely to be blogging for a while. No, she’s not going to buy a mantilla anytime soon and she wont be joining the LMS, but as her diet gets simpler (we did find some cabbage, by the way) she seems to like more “twiddly bits” in her faith. You can tell she’s on holiday, she’s nearly cheery and she’s cleaned the car.

She informs us, and we are not pleased, that there is a new business venture out there, I will not mention the name because I do not wish to be the first blogging bear to have legal chappies after my fur. This business involves the selling of bears, a tasteless enterprise at the best of times. Bears find you, you don’t buy them, you pay a ransom and rescue them, when they want to be resuced. Anyway, this venture turns this fact on its head because it is purely commercial as the “customer” actually designs his/her own bear! Can you believe it? They pay to design a bear to their specification and put a “heart” in it! This is not good, the relationship between bear and bear-owner is corrupted. A bear freely gives himself to you, with all his defects, personality issues and wonky stitching and he will stick by you till you discard or forget about him. If he is designed by you, how can he freely have given himself to you. This designed bear is part of your ego and is not a free standing bag of stuffing and fluff in his own right.

Will these designed bears behave any differently? I do not know. Will their expectations be any different from ours? We do not know. We do know however that the bear’s end is a slow demise. Some are loved to bits over decades, some spend years in the loft in a toy box, some get sent to charity shops waiting to be rescued again. The majority will eventually end up in the hands of the salvage men at the tip; they give us our end. Some finish their days in a manic, all weather, teddy bears picnic at the side of the tip sitting on “rescued” plastic chairs. Others are strapped to the radiator grill of the bin wagons for a filthy, high speed final adventure. Others will be intimately examined on prime time television on the “Antiques Roadshow”, be auctioned and end up as prisoners in the glass cases of some bear fanaticists. Will a designed bear accept his fate, after all some of your ego as gone into its creation? It just doesn’t seem right to me to bring a bear into the world to satisfy your own whims.

Then again do we bears mind how you treat us? No, not really. We are just stuffing and fur after all. We are at your service and you do with us as you please. Our intellects are far superior to yours and we can out stare you any day, but we know our fate.

Bearing up

Hello there,

Whilst Rita's taken her bat home, I bethought myself it may be a good idea to keep her blog alive with some occasional ramblings from the sofa bed.

I'm Ollie. I share the sofa bed in the study with a venerable and camera shy bear of some 40+ years from Wigan (Rita's favourite, they've been through thin and thin together). I myself was rescued from the cake counter of a cafe on the Yorkshire/Lancashire border some 10 years ago and as Rita brought me over to Lancashire, I count it as my ancestral home. Now we all live in deepest, dankest Wessex in the most astonishing wilderness. It has its advantages, this is AGA country and the good ladies around here make damn fine cakes. Rita doesn't share my passion for cakes, but then again she doesn't really know what I get up to whilst she's away.


The only musing I have for today is: what has happened to all the cabbages, there are none in the shops? Have the Chinese commandeered the whole UK crop or something? Not that I can find a decent cake recipe with cabbage in it, but it is the vegetable of choice chez Rita. The old girl is in need of comfort food, for her this is glutenous rice and cabbage. We like to keep her on her feet, earning money and keeping us in the manner to which we've become accustomed, but she's flagging a bit and I think some cabbage would help.

Muniment and Malachi

Last Sunday's reading from the Prophet Malachi always leave priests feeling a little uncomfortable. The Book of Malachi is only short and deserves to be read in its entirety. We should read it and all feel a little uncomfortable, not just priests.

It is hard not to see this book in a contemporary light, it smacks right to the heart of the Church on earth. We should not be surprised by this, good prophecy is timeless because it reveals timeless truth. The sad thing is that there is still the need for such a stern prophecy, priests and people are still doing the same old, same old; picking and choosing what to believe in, being unfaithful and not fearing God.

The frustration of some with the Catholic hierarchy in the UK is due in no small measure to the belief that they "have caused many to stumble by their teaching"(Mal 2:8). It is a frustration that the Body has been weakened and that those in a position to strengthen the Body seem for the most part incapable of (a) obedience (b) seeing the problem, (c) having the guts to do what they were ordained to do. If it is a frustration born of love and powerlessness, both things are inherently good. Indeed if that frustration boils into anger, provided it is channeled correctly, then it can be for the good. Though at all times remembering the legal maxim those who come into equity must come with clean hands because it is always dangerous to say "we have a better claim to be the Church more than those others who claim to be the Church".

I put forward the proposition that some priests/bishops and people have always been like they are portrayed in the Book of Malachi, this is not some arrogant judgment on my part but a statement of fact. We are dealing here with types, not specific people. Many are causing others to stumble; pray that we are not a cause of stumbling or stumblers who have been led astray. Yet somehow the rickety ship keeps afloat, God is in control. The unknown faithful by their service to God in prayers, good works and adoration, in no small measure make sure of that.

When we know we are right about something, and someone else is in the wrong, we should never draw attention to ourselves, only to the source of our righteousness, and carry the ruptures the wrong has caused as a penance. I was told this by my confessor yesterday.


Let us not weary the Lord with our words (Mal 2:17).
I'm going to stop serious blogging for a bit too.

The Devil opines.....

I've been following these last few posts with interest. I like nothing better than watching strife and tetchyness between Catholics who should be on the same side...being the original lazy arsed sloth, and by far the most accomplished one at that, it is my great pleasure to do nothing and watch my work being done for me. Well, it was originally my work that meant that people lost the ability to comprehend each other, so I have to take some credit for it. A little pat on the back for yours truly, I have this amazing ability to do my own work even without doing it. I'm just so fantastic, don't you think.

I'll tell you what I hate though. What I hate most about mortal man is priests. They should be all mine but they are not. They are a bunch of weak, pathetic, insecure, vulnerable men and I love to torment them, but so few of them fall, it makes me quite mad. Mind you, I'm not always lazy, what makes me really livid and really fires me up is a very holy priest and for him I'll even venture onto the sanctuary (do you know how foul that place is, the stench nearly does for me). I can give him sudden violent pain, I can make the text in the Missal wobble comically before his eyes, I can suggest highly inappropriate thoughts and images, and I can induce blackness, emptyness and unbelief. I do most of my damage to him in the presbytery but a little nudge in the sanctuary really brings him down. A moments distraction in his prayer and whap, in I go.

I also hate children, I mean really hate them. Why do people still bother having them? What are they for? Still, they sometimes unwittingly add to my mirth, sweet little dears. I'll give you an example. There is a priest I know, who is pretty low. He feels let down by his bishop, he feels totally over worked, and he is very lonely. When I've worked him up to a high level of self pity he really is a complete wretch and then I drop the killer suggestion to him your parish don't even respect you, it doesn't matter how often you ask for fractious children to be taken out at Mass, they never are, they're ruining it for you aren't they, nothing is beautiful anymore, nothing feels sacred, there are no spiritual consolations, everything is drudgery, oh and you are sooo lonely, why not give it all up, eh? The man is a living wreck AND he's losing his faith. SCORE!!! Well not quite. He doggedly clings to his priesthood, but I'm working on that. Every time a child misbehaves during Mass, I'm just stand at the back laughing at this priest and say nothing to do with me mate, you're feeling sooo bad and soooo unloved and it soooo has nothing to do with me. Haa Haa!

Appropriate response

Dear Anonymous has replied most graciously to my last post on the behaviour of children at Mass. Most of the text is shown below, but I have added my own comments in bold.

1. Parenting is really, very hard work, a type of difficulty against which all others pale to nothing, which cannot be known properly by those who do not have children. This is not the kind of 'hard' one ever stops to consider because, when one is presented with the one's first baby, you just get on with it. By the time you have three in (nearly) four years, the work is near constant, as are the anxieties (too numerous to count, but try 'How do I form my children in a robust Faith?'), the contingent work (wage-earning), organisation, housing (especially if you do not own a place), and of course education, to important to be entrusted to normal schools. And so on, and so on. In short, when some parents seem to let their children run riot it is because they are so tired they do not know what to do, are too overburdened to think a behavioural situation through.
Yes, but would they let this happen in a restaurant or at a concert. No, they wouldn't take the children, they would find a baby sitter or go without such luxuries. Now is Mass a luxury, of course not. However, one reason why parenting is so difficult these days is the lack of an extended family, people to leave children with whilst you go to Mass with your husband. The primary aim of marriage is offspring, the secondary is the sanctification of your partner, spiritual time together is very important.

2. The children who are misbehaved may well be unwell, have ADHD or somesuch (be it nature or nurture induced). Again, although I have no direct experience of this, and one tends to think 'Bloody give them a clip round the ear', this doesn't actually work with mentally disabled children.
Unwell is fine at Mass, unwell and unruly needs thinking through, if it is going to distract the priest, then it is not good, they can be under enough assaults from the devil during Mass as it is. Children are rarely living saints, they can vehicles for ill (because of their self-centredness), even without sinning. Pray to their guardian angels.

3. The Mass may be the only time in a week a parent can get to be with the Lord in the Eucharist. Should they give this up so you can have some quiet?
No, that is a silly argument. The answer remains the same as the one to point 1.

4. Your concentration is not relevant to the reality of the Mass; God happens, so you have to be there. This is a reality of great importance to parents. In the nearly five years since I had parenthood sprung on me, I have actually felt like I prayed at most a dozen times at Sunday Mass. My children are immaculately behaved, (for children - see below) but this takes continuous low-level concentration on my part. I can never loose myself in praise.
Yes, the action of the Mass takes place irrespective of the worthyness of the priest or the concentration of the congregation. But, there is a danger here of presumption, the presumption that reverence is not necessary (I'm not referring to your family here, only really bad behaviour). Reverence is vital, Calvary deserves reverence. Yes, it is MY problem BUT the assaults of the devil and the occasions for sinful thought when children are misbehaving are great.

5. Don't expect children to behave like adults. They are not adults and do not behave like it. Even mine, who are, as implied above, quiet and engaged, will find themselves amazingly excited by some seemingly pointless thing and fall over themselves to explain it/ fall about laughing/ squeal with excitement/ whisper at the consecration/ etc.
That is all good, there is no problem with this.

6. The Latin Mass in its current incarnation creates amongst the congregants an attitude of sighing intolerance, a real 'people set apart'. 'Did you not know, Latin Mass is for the truly devoted?' I have experienced this in about five different churches. Nobody likes the de-sacralised, jumble-sale shtick of the average NO Mass, but nobody wants us at the Latin one (except the Franciscans of the Immaculate in Stoke). So what do we parents do? Trudge along broken-hearted to an event we are confused (at best) about, passing on only frustration and disappointment as the fruits of a Catholic life to our children?
But you have just said that the Mass is the Mass. I must say, I regularly attend Latin Mass is two different diocese and there are far more children there than other Masses, they are behaving like children, not adults, but they are welcomed and there is no irreverent misbehaviour.

I could go on, but my point is simply this: If the Catholic Church is going to survive in this country, and outside of the major university cities this is actually not likely, we need children to get the Faith. There is no one blueprint for the Faith, but if the children aren't praying at home and building a relationship with the Blessed Trinity, the Mother of God, the angels and the saints, then no amount of Mass attendance will work. They will not get the Faith in school, even less of it in Catholic school (statistically true), and are normally raised in functionally Protestant households (85-odd percent of Catholics are contraceptive, contra God and his Church) Our best Catholics are so often converts or reverts who really discover Faith in adulthood. If they don't go to church and receive the full grace of God by baring witness to and eventually participating in the Mass, from where is it supposed to come? Turning up at Mass does not magically bestow grace on anyone.

Question: Sanctifying grace is a habitual gift...a supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God (CCC 2000), we know this grace by its fruits, are the fruits really there if chaos reigns supreme and a child who is old enough to know better, is bent on destruction and mischief?

Appropriate behaviour

Prompted by some comments on my previous post, I will now dare to write about the appropriate behaviour of children at Mass.

My last school was a boys' school and we were never allowed to say anything they did was wrong, only that it was inappropriate. So overtly sexualised posturing, sexist language and racist language were never "wrong", just "inappropriate". I don't like this approach, but I will adopt it for the forthcoming argument.

Matthew 18: 1-6 is often cited as a good reason for us to suffer children at Mass irrespective of their behaviour. I quote it at the end of this piece, in case your memory needs refreshing.

The child that Jesus calls and puts in the midst of the disciples is not described. However verse 2 does not end with the words, and after the child had thrown its toy camel at a disciple, hollered loudly for its mother and tugged at Jesus's beard and hair... . An inappropriately behaved child would not make any sense in this Gospel passage. The child was meek, the child was called by Jesus and the child responded appropriately. Being placed in the midst of the disciples makes the child a teacher and a most profound one at that. As the Son is infront of the Father, so the child is infront of Our Lord, and so ought we be too. Never, never get in the way of a child and its faith, the consequences are terrifying.


It is the child who simply doesn't appreciate that church is a sacred space, different from the living room, that can lead to inappropriate behaviour, both from the child and its parents. It can never be appropriate to feed a child (save breastfeeding) at Mass,. How will a child ever appreciate the Eucharist if it is leaving great lumps of Jaffa cake smeared over the pews? It is never appropriate to bribe a child to be quiet during Mass. It is never appropriate to hold a conversation with a child that has no relevance to the Mass whilst the Mass is taking place. Is it appropriate that there is a child whose parents let it run all over the sanctuary before Mass pulling the flower arrangements to bits? Are not all these types of behaviour likely to get in between the child and its growing faith.

If we look at Luke 2:41-43, it seems clear that children were only expected to journey to the Temple in Jerusalem on reaching the age of 12. An age where appreciation of and appropriate behaviour during religious ceremonies would be expected. I'm not saying 12 is the best age, indeed I'm not suggesting any age requirements only an understanding that perhaps the child needs some appreciation of what is happening.

The things that would be considered inappropriate in the public gallery of a law court, or at a funeral, or at a gallery of priceless artifacts aren't somehow appropriate at Mass.

The very smelly old lady at Mass, the man with the bowel problem that leaves him smelling of faecal material, the man in the wheelchair who makes involuntary groans, the gurgling infant, the devout alcoholic who needs a swig of vodka half way through Mass to stop him shaking...are all behaving appropriately.

I have been in a very delicate state this last few months, I have needed to be at Mass and receive the sacraments. Can you imagine how upsetting it can be when you don't feel like you've been to Mass because children and their parents seem to have no understanding of the need for reverence, and that foucussed prayer needs a level of concentration that can not be obtained if some child you don't know is poking a Thomas the Tank Engine in your ear.

Matthew 18:1-6
At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" 2 And calling to him a small child, he put him in the midst of them, 3 and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me;.."

(parentheses(various))

The Telegraph newspaper reports the death on the 24th October of John McCarthy, the originator of probably the worlds coolest and arguably most influential programming language LISP. As undergraduate Physicists, we had to struggle endlessly with FORTRAN, a clunky mess of a language that I could never get to do what I wanted it to do. FORTRAN caused me hours of frustration and I loathed it. The Mathematicians were all using PASCAL and that seemed better, in a "grass is always greener on the other side" kind of way. But my Computer Science friends were using LISP and it just seemed worthwhile, sensible and logical...My fellow physicists laughed at it and mocked the endless parentheses, but scoot forward in time and see just how influential it has been...

So thank you John MaCarthy for the neatness and elegance of your work and for making programming nearly fun.
(RIP)

********

Aisle Rats:
When traveling by train, I like to use the "quiet carriage"; a marvelous invention where mobile phone and loud conversation are prohibited. Imagine my annoyance when two quiet adults decided to park themselves in the quiet carriage with a tribe of aisle rats all under the age of 7. How can you be quiet if you have with you mobile, random noise generators with no off button? Yes, you may look like the type of people who do not make use of mobile electronic devices, but the quiet carriage is quiet and cannot be so with your children racing and screeching down the aisles.

A bit like church really. We are expected to suffer distracting noise if it is child related. Does this really extend to suffering children who do not know how to behave in the environment in which they are placed? Does a rendition of the fireman sam song during the consecration really improve the liturgy?

We are not allowed to say anything though are we, we get accused of not liking children, we get accused on not seeing their innocence for what it is.

Children will imitate the reverence of adults around them with time and good example. Families really ought to have some sort of oratory or prayer space at home where they get used to reverential quiet and prayer...it may help. And if it doesn't, take the little one out, please! Father has spent a fortune making sure the you can still hear and see the Mass from behind sound proof glass.

********

St Paul's Cathedral
I'm feeling that the whole sorry mess of the tented community encamped outside and preventing the cathedral from opening is a reflection of the weakness of the evangelical "what would Jesus do?" theology. Let us not forget that the ever so practical and down to earth Saint Francis de Sales used this phrase too, but he never used it out of the context of the commandments of loving God and neighbour.

Our tented friends may have a grievance that some will sympathise with, however, they took advantage of Christian niceness and some misguided belief that Jesus would be supporting them and tenting with them to the exclusion of the bankers and money men.

Remember folks; Christianity is about personal holiness and abhorrence of sin because of the love of God. Everything stems from our right action caused by our right motives and reliance on God. Maybe we ought to see being p***ed on by greedy capitalists as some sort of necessary mortification for our salvation.

The C of E does seem particularly prone to being hijacked by "causes" that then take advantage. Very sad, very sad indeed.

More good news from Old Trafford

First the cricket, and now this...



But don't worry, the DNA of the "noisy neighbours" in blue is such that we are destined for tragicomedy...just allow us a little gloat for now.

pergoogleplexed

My computer glitches are driving me mad, any inspiration for a post is lost by the time I've fired up this ancient laptop, because EVERYTHING I try with the "fast" computer, so far has failed.

I've tried "system restore" but it wont accept any of the restore points. Therefore I think it is a virus.

I do a full virus scan, viruses detected and eliminated. Google still not loading.

I defrag the hard drive. Google still not playing.

I clean the registry. Google still not working.

I go to the command prompt (ah the nostalgia- I wrote my thesis from the DOS prompt- in the days before Windows) and "ipconfig/flushdns". Still google won't play.

I try going to "blogger" using a proxy server. I get to the website!! Hurray! I log in and then it times me out. Sigh!!!

********
'Tis a good job there's more to life than blogging.

blogging lite #2

My old laptop (11 years old) is still going strong but takes an age to boot up and gets a little anxious if there is too much Java stuff for it to process. Therefore I've been using the other computer in the house, and up until about 10 days ago, things were going well.

Now, on opening ANY browser, the computer will not go to anything related to blogger and is desperately slow on all google sites. It has nothing to do my firewall or the security settings when online, because the laptop is on the same settings. It may be a virus but a blinking strange one of it is...and bizarre that it has gone undetected by F-secure (they are usually very good).

This is an annoying problem that maybe related to a missive I sent blogger from that computer, complaining that they really had to sort out their problems for Firefox users (commenting on blogs being the most irritating issue). I explained I had no intention of "buying" into the whole "google experience", as they are getting far too big as it is; I would not be using "Chrome", "google+", "gmail" and out of choice I try not to use google as a search engine.....it is strange that all my problems stem from after I sent that missive.

Therefore blogging is lite, whilst I summon up the enthusiasm to try to work out what is going wrong and do a system restore.

And no, I wont be moving to "Wordpress".

And, yes, I'm in a grumpy mood. I'm a rabid, foaming at the mouth Papist, incapable of compromise and stuff is happening out there I can't blog about but is driving me spare. Probably a good job gremlins have got into the computer, it will stop me from saying something I may regret.

*******
Sent from a steam powered, 10kg, ancient laptop with a dodgy fan and not enough RAM.

blogging lite

As much as I like this blog, I am feeling a little concerned that my science practical with year 10 on Friday involved beakers and tea-lights, and some girls in tears because they couldn't do the maths. And yes, it was risk assessed and no I wasn't wearing Hi-Viz.

Puzzling bumper sticker...

...and worse.

First the bumper sticker, that I presume is from an evangelical Christian. I happened to be driving behind this for too long this evening, so had plenty of time to muse over its naffness.

It said: Do you follow Jesus this close!!!

I presume it is a bumper sticker telling me to "back off". Yet backing off would suggest that I was not a close follower of the Lord. To deny Him is wrong, ought I have got into the car with her?



Now for the "worse".

Say a prayer for my late husband's 95 year old auntie, Mary. And say a prayer to her Guardian Angel. Mary is a fine lady, hard as nails, a foreman welder in Radcliffe during the war (and blinded in one eye for her troubles), but get beyond the toughness and there is a woman of remarkable faith and fortitude and a most reliable of friends.

She had a fall a few years ago and needed the full time care provided by a care home. Last week she got an infection, it was making her a bit strange in the head and she started refusing food and drink and spitting at her relatives and carers.

The family wanted her admitted to hospital.

The response from her GP was; well you know she is very old, is it really worth doing anything? If she has decided to go, shouldn't you choose to let her go?

Family outraged and upset, but now Mary is in hospital, responding to antibiotics and saying charitable things like "where is that bl**dy GP, I'll kill him".

The new NHS is here, folks, and the new mantra is "admit as few people to hospital as possible". You have been warned.

thoughts at morning Mass (2)

At Mass this morning I was behind a woman who was really squirming and struggling when Father said the priesthood is only for men. Well, it is hardly groundbreaking stuff, and for many of us about as controversial as saying the Pope has a balcony. I do, however feel for those who have made allowing women into the priesthood, something of a cause. They are blinding themselves to the nature of Christ in His Church, it a sort of self-imposed spiritual mortification and it does the mortifier no end of harm.

A larger question remains as to what is the theological significance of women? The biological significance of men and women is not in question. The theological significance of men is not really in question either, theologically speaking it is men who are the barers of new life through the grace of God. Eve came from Adam's rib, the priest acts "in persona Christi" bringing us new life through the Sacraments, the new life of marriage is something that the husband brings to the wife....

I have no answer to the question I have posed.....

However I have had a phrase going round my head for sometime now "live your life as if it were all the defence of an unwritten thesis". Maybe silence is the answer, pondering things in our hearts, absorbing the complexities and simplicities of life and acting carefully and quietly, making as few ripples as possible. Just choose your thesies wisely, ladies.


One place that is not place for a woman (a pulpit in a Catholic Church)

Solved

Error bars notwithstanding, some of those neutrinos arrived at Gran Sasso before they should have done because the went via Rome; simples really.

Takling of bars; here is a bad neutrino joke doing the rounds.

Bartender, "We don't serve your type in here". A muon neutrino walks into a bar.


A momentum-space diagram AKA Feynmann diagram depicting an anti-muon neutrino (bottom right).

I've no interest in neutrinos, unless they start to reveal huge flaws in the current best theories of Physics, and personally I think we are a long way from that...*


So by way of a Friday meditation, here is a quote from Mgr Ronald Knox on a completely unrelated topic:

The virtue of Patience. Almighty God means us to suffer; it is good for us; and he means us to suffer not only from natural causes over which man has no control, but from our fellow-men; from mistakes, the misjudgements, the misgovernment of our fellow-men. Most of us have some unlovable qualities which we can't help; most of us do and say the wrong things, without meaning to; and besides that, there are our faults. Part of the reason why God put you into the world was to exercise the patience of others by your defects; think of that sometimes when you are going to bed. It is a salutary thought... Your bad temper, your excesive cheerfulness, your tiresomeness in conversation; He chose the right person, didn't He? Well, if other people are being so admirably exercised by patience in you, it seems a pity you shouldn't be exercised by them now and again in your turn; that's only fair. The offering of patience which you can make to God; the little things you have to put up with- and that offering is to be made in slience.

Mgr Ronlad Knox: - from a talk on murmuring: The Priestly Life ( a retreat)

********
* Neutrino detectors are cool, however. The picture below is of the construction of the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector in Japan.

Isn't human ingenuity amazing!

When hadrons collide

Our favourite Archdruid, has brought to our attention some comments of Jeremy Hardy regarding the religious belief of scientists. You can read the post here

Indeed, in the spirit of re-enactment for which her community are so fond, I raise my indestructible mug of strong Brownian Motion (a nice beaker of tea) in her general direction, on my own and without the support of a community or even a tea light, because as everyone knows physicists never get invited to the right sort of parties.


********
Her comments did get me thinking about my fellow Physicists. I'd have to agree, a sizable number are religious. However I am still puzzling as to why this is. It would be bad sicence indeed to probe the questions of ultimate smallness and beginnings of beginnings and to say, simply because our brains were fried, we can't understand this so it must be God wot done it. That would be bad science and bad theology.

My own view is that the aquisition of scientific knowledge involves rigourous discipline and hard study. One has to be a mental athlete and have a heightened awareness of the world around one, in order to really succeed. Therefore what the Physicist achieves is a merited reward, based on their study and their sensitivity towards the natural world. Knowledge of God involves grace, which is always an unmerited gift and involves the receiver at the very least acknowledging that he wishes to seek God. Hence the religious Physicist has not got his understanding and knowledge of the Divine from his study of Science. I'd suggest that it is his openness to religion that is a product of the rationality that his discipline has given him and the metaphysical questions he inevitably asks, BUT that his faith does not come from that source, it comes from the same source as everyone elses whether they be a scientist or not.

To paraphrase Fr Georges Lemaitre, religious physicists don't walk or play sport differently from anyone else, why should they do science differently from the non-believing scientist.

One final point and I'd be interested if any other Physicists can back me up on this. In my years of being in the company of male Physicists, I'm very struck by the fact they don't seem to age like other men, check out the age of Prof Brian Cox, if you don't believe me. Is Physics the elixr of youth, for the male of the species at any rate (the sample size for females being too small, and my lack of objectivity meaning I can't make any claims about them)? The boyish yet senior Physicist is not something I find all that charming, but I have to admit I do think it is an observable phenomenon worthy of further study.

Lost in Translation...(2)

There are things from the Vulgate that to me seem so much more inspired than later translations that have worked from more sources. I would be grateful if anyone can point me to passages where the opposite is true and later translations have specific poigniancy for the reader and where the Vulgate translation seems bland. Below is one small example of significance to me as this psalm is my main scriptural prop these days.

Consider Psalm 84 (83) Quam dilecta

try the second stanza:
Douay-Rheims
For the sparrow has found herself a house, and the turtle a nest for herself where she may lay her young.

RSV
Even the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young.


RSV: sparrows and swallows are good; a home bird and a migratory bird both finding a home in the dwelling places (tabernacles) of the Lord.

D-R: sparrow is there too, and maybe I'm reading to much into this but the turtle rather than the swallow takes this to another level. (Yup, I know I should check the Latin/Greek for the correct fauna, but the whole point of this post is that you shouldn't have to, it isn't an option for most people.) The turtle is an animal that makes a nest for her young and leaves them there in trust never to return. Somehow, I relate to this. So often I find I offer up what I have and what I am before the Lord before returning to the wasteland, trusting it entirely to His safekeeping.

Consider the later stanza:
RSV
Blessed are men whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.

D-R
Blessed is the man whose help is from thee; in his heart he hath disposed to ascend by steps, in the vale of tears, in the place which he hath set.

Undoubtedly the RSV is more poetic and obviuously draws from more material, however again it is the D-R that is more inspiring. Both versions show ascent to the Lord, highways to Zion or ascend by steps. But it is so much more personal inthe D-R; the man with the singular determination to ascend from the vale of tears, from where he is right this moment, with gritted teeth and determination from whatever abject state he may now be in. Again, this is so much easier for me to relate to.

Why am I mentioning all this? Just this notion that translation ought to be inspiring as well as accurate. Yup, I know that is a subjective thing and it is a good thing that we have so many translations available, and I not knocking using other sources apart from the Vulgate, it is just for me, time and time again, it is the Vulgate that inspires and gets to the heart of the matter.

Just don't get me going on the Grail psalms in the Office.......


A turtle (the author of this blog)

Lost in Translation....(1)

The New Jerusalem Bible, what is the deal with this? After all, it is the translation used for scripture readings at Mass in the UK, but why is it so, well so....I can't explain, but here is an example from yesterday's Mass:

Matthew 18:21 New Jerusalem
Then Peter went up to him and said ,"Lord, how often must I forgive my brother if he wrongs me? As often as seven times?"

Mathew 18: 21 Douay-Rheims
Then Peter came unto him and said: Lord how often shall my brother offend against me, and I forgive him? Seven times?

Matthew 18:21 RSV
Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?"

Matthew 18:21 Good News Bible
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, if my brother keeps on sinnning against me, how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven times?"


When the Good News Bible is saying the same thing as the Douai-Rheims , but the New Jerusalem is on a different tack (no mention of the offender sining many times, just multiple forgiveness)...hmm, is the New Jerusalem just trying to be clever? I'm not sure it is being helpful.