More than Rules

A certain argument for liturgical license that has been put forth to me more than once is that "Christianity is more than just obeying a bunch of rules--it's about relationship"!  Okay.  I'm willing to grant that.  But can we also agree that the primary relationship is between Christ and the Christian?  And that Christ is God, and that the Christian is not?  And that in any relationship between God and a man, God alone has the authority to dictate the terms of that relationship?  So what does God say about this relationship?  "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (Jn 14:15) Not "If you love me, you should keep my commandments," but "you will keep my commandments."  Keeping God's commandments is a necessary (though not sufficient) part of loving God, of having a relationship with Him.  Christianity is certainly more than "just obeying a bunch of rules"--but it has to start there.  And part of obeying God is humble obedience to the legitimate demands of the legitimate authorities he has put over us.  For Catholics, the rubrics of the liturgy are part of that.

What I Do.

In case it's interesting to anyone out there.  

I work with children and youth on drug abuse awareness, teen pregnancy avoidance, emotional health (e.g., self-control, healthy self-image, etc.) issues, life skills, developing healthy eating and exercise habits, and building healthy relationships.  I also oversee their academic education.  I try to make their lives as normal and secure and loving as possible.  I am their mother, and I am married to their father.  It's an unusual approach, but it works.

Beauty Is NOT in the Eye of the Beholder

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" seems like a sweet idea.  It evokes images of people who aren't particularly physically attractive, but have hearts of gold.  It gives us the superior feeling of being more discerning than the average person, of not judging by "mere appearances." 

But it's really just poison with a sweet perfume.  To say with Hume that "beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them" is to say that there is nothing we call beauty which exists as an independent, objective quality or attribute of a thing. Which is another way of saying that God (being transcendent) is not beautiful, although some of us may have beautiful feelings about Him.

Beauty, like truth, is a transcendental thing.  And all Beauty, all Truth, all Goodness, and perfect Unity is found in God.  No reasonable person defends himself against the charge of bearing false witness with the argument that "truth is in the mind of the thinker."  No parent, telling his child to "be good" would consider that "Goodness is whatever the child thinks it is." So also with Beauty.  It's no good trying to discuss whether something is beautiful with statements such as, "I like it," or, "it moves me," or, "I think it's pretty."

To the extent that things conform to and reflect the Beauty of God, they are beautiful. Thus, the criteria for judging Beauty are found in God Himself. God is a God of order.  Therefore, disorderly things are not beautiful. God is not an abstraction; He is real. It could even be said that He is Reality.  So we have the principle that abstract "art" is not beautiful.  (Although, to be fair, the purpose of the artist in producing abstract art is not to make something  beautiful, although he is presumably trying to communicate something about another transcendental quality.) 

For another time:  Beauty & Architecture, Beauty & Liturgical Music

Divorce: It's All About ME!

In the US, divorce is not the unforgivable sin, it is the unrepented sin.  Somehow, people seem to feel that divorce is sanitized by getting an annulment, as if that makes everything squeaky clean and paves the way to marry Honey #2. It doesn't seem to enter people's minds that, having brought children into the world -- whether in a marriage or outside of one -- they are responsible for them, and that responsibility involves putting aside one's own feelings to meet the needs of the children.  Somehow, in their eagerness to assert their rights and proclaim their innocence, the children are trampled underfoot.  The children's world has just been turned upside down, and their parents blithely tell people that "everything is okay with the children; they are doing fine; both of us make a point to tell them we still love them."  It sure doesn't look like that from the perspective of the children.  They now have to be perpetual gypsies, moving back and forth from one house to the other.  (Two houses, two sets of rules, two worlds.  And they're expected to navigate easily between the two.) They've learned that no matter how much someone says he  is committed to his wife or children, no one will publicly question his decision to break up his family, let alone assert that he is selfish and despicable for not keeping his word.  (Of course, it goes without saying that the same goes for "her.") They've learned that they are a lower priority than their parents' agendas:  Mom and Dad are both wrapped up in their legal and canonical wranglings, finding Honey #2, and separating one household into two (who gets the West African death mask we bought in 1994?).

Every parent knows in his heart that divorce is bad for children. (Even psychologists are starting to recognize it.)  It used to be that parents wouldn't divorce "for the sake of the children."  They had a sense of responsibility to their children, and willingly sacrificed their own "fulfillment."  That whole thing about being thrown into the sea wearing a millstone necklace being a better option than stumbling a child was taken seriously.  These days the decision to divorce is often made independent of the consideration of its impact on the children.  (Of course, if physical abuse is involved, that is a proportionately grave reason for a divorce... but not necessarily for entering into another marriage.)

Who Should Be a Part of Whose Life?

I've been told many times (usually in a homily) that God needs to be part of my life.  It doesn't quite sound right.  Kinda like, "I have the active part of my life, the intellectual part of my life, the social part of my life, and the God part of my life."  I want what the saints had:  to be completely devoted to God.  And not just that.  To be in Christ. Not even just to belong to Him, but to be taken up into His Life.  To be part of His Life.  That's better:  We should strive to be part of God's Life, rather than to make Him part of ours.  

God is Love - I John 5.8

It is one of the simplest and most familiar phrases in the Bible.  It has also been, for some reason, one of the most difficult for me to make any sense of.  God is loving.  Okay, I get that.  But God is Love sounds like an invitation to worship at the altar of eroticism.  I think I finally made some progress in my understanding when I started from the other direction.  Man is not Love.  But man can be loving.  Man cannot be love, he can only do loving things.  ("This is love, that we follow His commandments." II John 1.6)  Man's love is therefore, ephemeral and transitory, because as soon as he ceases to act in love, his love vanishes.  Only God's love is eternal, because the part of God we reflect in loving actions, resides as a Thing in God Himself.  A man can preach the Word of God.  In some sense he becomes the Word to other men.  But if he stops preaching, he is no longer the Word to other men because the Word does not (this side of Heaven) reside in him as an eternal essence.   He can bring God's salvation to other men.  But he himself is not that salvation.

Suffering & the Sorrowful Mysteries

While saying the rosary with my husband the other day, it occurred to me that each of the first four sorrowful mysteries represents a different mode of suffering.  The agony in the garden reflects the pain of anticipation of suffering, as when there's a root canal on the schedule later in the week. The scourging at the pillar is clearly a physically painful suffering.  The crowning with thorns, although certainly involving a great deal of physical pain, seems to emphasize the suffering of humiliation.  The carrying of the cross was the bearing of a large burden, the weight of the heavy cross and our even heavier sins.  (I'd say this is the kind of suffering one experiences when his child is in pain.) The fifth mystery, the crucifixion, is a synthesis of all four modes or kinds of suffering: anticipation (of complete separation from God: "My God, why have you abandoned Me?"), physical pain (duh!), humiliation (punished as a criminal, strung up naked, and derided by those passers-by and the others crucified with Him), and bearing a burden (the consummation of His identification with our sins and the punishment attached to them).