"Nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so overcoming"

There's a book I really enjoyed called Loss and Gain. John Henry Newman (recently beatified, woohoo!) wrote it in 1848, and it's a short novel set in Oxford in the early 1800's, portraying every religious opinion and character the university had to offer. One character in the book is an emotional and impetuous young man named Willis, who up and converts to Catholicism one fine day. An Anglican named Bateman challenges Willis' new beliefs, finally asking him about the Mass.

"These are such difficult questions," answered Willis; "must I speak? Such difficult questions," he continued, rising into a more animated manner, and kindling as he went on; "I mean, people view them so differently: it is so difficult to convey to one person the idea of another. The idea of worship is different in the Catholic Church from the idea of it in your Church; for, in truth, the religions are different. Don't deceive yourself, my dear Bateman," he said tenderly, "it is not that ours is your religion carried a little farther,—a little too far, as you would say. No, they differ in kind, not in degree; ours is one religion, yours another. [....] I declare, to me," he said, and he clasped his hands on his knees, and looked forward as if soliloquising,—"to me nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so overcoming, as the Mass, said as it is among us. I could attend Masses for ever and not be tired. It is not a mere form of words, —it is a great action, the greatest action that can be on earth. It is, not the invocation merely, but, if I dare use the word, the evocation of the Eternal. He becomes present on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow and devils tremble. This is that awful event which is the scope, and is the interpretation, of every part of the solemnity. Words are necessary, but as means, not as ends; they are not mere addresses to the throne of grace, they are instruments of what is far higher, of consecration, of sacrifice. They hurry on as if impatient to fulfil their mission. Quickly they go, the whole is quick; for they are all parts of one integral action. Quickly they go; for they are awful words of sacrifice, they are a work too great to delay upon; as when it was said in the beginning: 'What thou doest, do quickly'. Quickly they pass; for the Lord Jesus goes with them, as He passed along the lake in the days of His flesh, quickly calling first one and then another. Quickly they pass; because as the lightning which shineth from one part of heaven unto the other, so is the coming of the Son of Man. Quickly they pass; for they are as the words of Moses, when the Lord came down in the cloud, calling on the Name of the Lord as He passed by, 'the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth'. And as Moses on the mountain, so we too 'make haste and bow our heads to the earth, and adore'. So we, all around, each in his place, look out for the great Advent, 'waiting for the moving of the water'. Each in his place, with his own heart, with his own wants, with his own thoughts, with his own intention, with his own prayers, separate but concordant, watching what is going on, watching its progress, uniting in its consummation;—not painfully and hopelessly following a hard form of prayer from beginning to end, but, like a concert of musical instruments, each different, but concurring in a sweet harmony, we take our part with God's priest, supporting him, yet guided by him. There are little children there, and old men, and simple labourers, and students in seminaries, priests preparing for Mass, priests making their thanksgiving; there are innocent maidens, and there are penitent sinners; but out of these many minds rises one eucharistic hymn, and the great Action is the measure and scope of it. And oh, my dear Bateman," he added, turning to him, "you ask me whether this is not a formal, unreasonable service—it is wonderful!" he cried, rising up, "quite wonderful. When will these dear good people be enlightened? O Sapientia, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia, O Adonai, O Clavis David et Exspectatio gentium, veni ad salvandum nos, Domine Deus noster."

[The Latin outburst at the end is from the O Antiphons of Advent season and means something like: "O Wisdom, sweetly and mightily ordering all things, O Lord, O Key of David and Desire of Nations, come and save us, O Lord our God."]

It was December 2006 when I first read Newman's book and there was a lot of it I didn't understand-- and not just because his characters spoke in an overwrought Victorian style.  I was in RCIA at the time and set to be received into the Catholic church at Easter, and I'd been going to Mass at least weekly for several months.  But I had never noticed that it was thrilling and overcoming, or that the words passed quickly as the lightning which shineth from one part of heaven unto the other, or that we in the congregation were concurring in a sweet harmony, taking our part with God's priest, supporting him, yet guided by him.

Really the Mass seemed kinda dead to me. The people barely tried to sing the hymns, there were no Bibles in the pews, and (this was by far the worst thing) the sermons were vague and wishy-washy. I remember thinking that my old Evangelical church would look so warm and loving and zealous and fun to any of those Catholics. Those first few months of trying to become Catholic illustrated for me one reason why so many people move the other way.

But slowly I started to appreciate the Catholic ways of expressing piety, and I began to see signs of faith in that parish where I hadn't been looking before.  And then I found a much better parish where the preaching was real, and that was when I really fell in love with the Mass and started going every day.  In April 2007 I was received into the Church and was thrilled about it.

Then in late 2007 my parish started offering the traditional Latin Mass, which is the way Mass was said for centuries (until 1970 when it switched from Latin to the vernacular language, and was simplified and changed in other ways as well.)  That older form of Mass was what Willis was talking about in the novel.  After I became familiar with the old Mass, I re-read Newman's novel and came across that paragraph again.  And I understood.  That's exactly it.

Thomas Merton, 14 years before Vatican II

I'm reading The Sign of Jonas, which is a very personal journal that Thomas Merton kept from 1947 to 1952, about his life in the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani.  He writes something I want to quote or remember on just about every page.  Here's a paragraph from September 1948, ending with a throwaway remark that just nails it.

Evelyn Waugh wanted to edit the English edition of The Seven Storey Mountain and has apparently already done so.  I am glad.  Also it seems he is going to do a feature for Life on the Church in America.  The idea seems to be that there is a great Catholic revival in this country and that the future of the Church depends on us.  That is all news to me.  If we are supposed to be reviving, where are our saints?

Thomas Merton, and how the devil holds you back

The priest's story in my last post, about the unreasonable fears the devil uses to hold us back from religious life, reminds me of Thomas Merton's struggle as recounted in The Seven Storey Mountain. Merton lived quite a reprobate life until his radical conversion to Catholicism as an adult. Then he felt strongly called to religious life, but the Franciscans who initially accepted him ended up rescinding their acceptance when they learned the full story of his past. He was crushed by this but told himself he had to put the possibility out of his mind, and he feared to speak of his longing to anyone lest he be rejected again. He started teaching at a Franciscan college, and tried to be content just with living as much like the friars as possible. But the idea of religious life wouldn't go away, and eventually the possibility reopened, and he arrived at a crisis:

Finally, on the Thursday of that week, in the evening, I suddenly found myself filled with a vivid conviction:

"The time has come for me to go and be a Trappist."

Where had the thought come from? All I knew was that it was suddenly there. And it was something powerful, irresistible, clear.

I picked up a little book called The Cistercian Life, which I had bought at Gethsemani, and turned over the pages, as if they had something more to tell me. They seemed to me to be all written in words of flame and fire.

I went to supper, and came back and looked at the book again. My mind was literally full of this conviction. And yet, in the way, stood hesitation: that old business. But now there could be no delaying. I must finish with that, once and for all, and get an answer. I must talk to somebody who would settle it. It could be done in five minutes. And now was the time. Now.

Whom should I ask? Father Philotheus was probably in his room downstairs. I went downstairs, and out into the court. Yes, there was a light in Father Philotheus' room. All right. Go in and see what he has to say.

But instead of that, I bolted out into the darkness and made for the grove.

It was a Thursday night. The Alumni Hall was beginning to fill. They were going to have a movie. But I hardly noticed it: it did not occur to me that perhaps Father Philotheus might go to the movie with the rest. In the silence of the grove my feet were loud on the gravel. I walked and prayed. It was very, very dark by the shrine of the Little Flower. "For Heaven's sake, help me!" I said.

I started back towards the buildings. "All right. Now I am really going to go in there and ask him. Here's the situation, Father. What do you think? Should I go and be a Trappist?"

There was still a light in Father Philotheus' room. I walked bravely into the hall, but when I got within about six feet of his door it was almost as if someone had stopped me and held me where I was with physical hands. Something jammed in my will. I couldn't walk a step further, even though I wanted to. I made a kind of a push at the obstacle, which was perhaps a devil, and then turned around and ran out of the place once more.

And again I headed for the grove. The Alumni Hall was nearly full. My feet were loud on the gravel. I was in the silence of the grove, among the wet trees.

I don't think there was ever a moment in my life when my soul felt so urgent and so special an anguish. I had been praying all the time, so I cannot say that I began to pray when I arrived there where the shrine was: but things became more definite.

"Please help me. What am I going to do? I can't go on like this. You can see that! Look at the state I am in. What ought I to do? Show me the way." As if I needed more information or some kind of a sign!

But I said this time to the Little Flower: "You show me what to do." And I added, "If I get into the monastery, I will be your monk. Now show me what to do."

It was getting to be precariously near the wrong way to pray-- making indefinite promises that I did not quite understand and asking for some sort of a sign.

Suddenly, as soon as I had made that prayer, I became aware of the wood, the trees, the dark hills, the wet night wind, and then, clearer than any of these obvious realities, in my imagination, I started to hear the great bell of Gethsemani ringing in the night-- the bell in the big grey tower, ringing and ringing, as if it were just behind the first hill. The impression made me breathless, and I had to think twice to realize that it was only in the my imaginination that I was hearing the bell of the Trappist Abbey ringing in the dark. Yet, as I afterwards calculated, it was just about that time that the bell is rung every night for the Salve Regina, towards the end of Compline.

The bell seemed to be telling me where I belonged-- as if it were calling me home.

This fancy put such determination into me that I immediately started back for the monastery-- going the long way 'round, past the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes and the far end of the football field. And with every step I took my mind became more and more firmly made up that now I would have done with all these doubts and hesitations and questions and all the rest, and get this thing settled, and go to the Trappists where I belonged.

When I came into the courtyard, I saw that the light in Father Philotheus' room was out. In fact, practically all the lights were out. Everobdy had gone to the movies. My heart sank.

Yet there was one hope. I went right on through the door and into the corridor, and turned to the Friars' common room. I had never even gone near that door before. I had never dared. But now I went up and knocked on the glass panel and opened the door and looked inside.

There was nobody there except one Friar alone, Father Philotheus.

I asked if I could speak with him and we went to his room.

That was the end of all my anxiety, all my hesitation.

As soon as I proposed all my hesitations and questions to him, Father Philotheus said that he could see no reason why I shouldn't want to enter a monastery and become a priest.

It may seem irrational, but at that moment, it was as if scales fell off my own eyes, and looking back on all my worries and questions, I could see clearly how empty and futile they had been. Yes, it was obvious that I was called to the monastic life: and all my doubts about it had been mostly shadows. Where had they gained such a deceptive appearance of substance and reality? Accident and circumstance had all contributed to exaggerate and distort things in my mind. But now everything was straight again. And already I was full of peace and assurance-- the consciousness that everything was right, and that a straight road had opened out, clear and smooth, ahead of me.

Father Philotheus had only one question:

"Are you sure you want to be a Trappist?" he asked me.

"Father," I answered, "I want to give God everything."

I could see by the expression on his face that he was satisfied.

I went upstairs like somebody who had been called back from the dead. Never had I experienced the calm, untroubled peace and certainty that now filled my heart. There was only one more question: would the Trappists agree with Father Philotheus, and accept my application?

Answer: yes, they did. :)

The fact that he finally conquered through the intercession of St. Thérèse ("the Little Flower") resonates with me too. On those rare occasions when I find myself up against the same obstacle-- some strange and very powerful unwillingness in my own mind to do what I know is God's will-- I pull out the big guns: "All you angels and saints in Heaven, please pray for me!" Then I find strength in my soul I didn't have before, and I manage to do whatever it is I know I'm supposed to do, and it's such a straightforward simple thing that I don't understand how it seemed so confusing and difficult. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, and they are not indifferent. They want to help us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

Merton's autobiography was an unexpected joy. I didn't think I had anything in common with this man who was born in 1915 and lived a completely different kind of life, and indeed the first half of the book was alien to me. But when he started moving towards becoming a Catholic monk, it all became delightfully familiar. I don't know much about his later career; apparently he studied Eastern mysticism and some seem to think that he fell away from the orthodox faith, but I haven't looked into it-- I just know that Seven Storey Mountain is awesome.

Nearly 900 pages of short essays by C.S. Lewis!

I'm glad I got my copy several years ago because it now seems to be out of print. Anyway, here's a sentence or two:

Without going as far as Freud we may yet well admit that every man has an old grudge against his father and his first teacher. The process of being brought up, however well it is done, cannot fail to offend.

Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy

I've written so many posts today-- why stop? I've finished Lost in the Cosmos and really liked it. It wasn't quite like anything I've read before and if I tried to describe it it'd take too long, so I'll just say that Walker Percy made me think in ways I hadn't thought before, and thinking in those ways actually helped me understand some of my own feelings (and possibly others' feelings) better than I had before.

I read it because I heard a talk by Peter Kreeft in which he said that Lost in the Cosmos tackles the same crisis that was addressed by Lewis' Abolition of Man-- but Lewis was writing mainly for a Christian audience and Percy writes for secular modern audience. He takes a much different angle and operates by asking questions rather than giving answers. Normally I'd be suspicious of that-- a guy who asks questions without answering them might be lazy, or muddle-headed, or he might not really believe in truth, or he might not want to know the truth-- but Percy's not like that; his questions are smart and really made me think. He's also very funny, especially in the Last Donahue Show scene.

What should I read next? Also: Catholic names

So I'm about 2/3 through The Curé d'Ars, a big fat biography of St. Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney by Abbé Trochu, and I'm loving it. If I have time I'll make a post with some of my favorite quotes from the book. But eventually, no matter how long this book is, I will come to the end of it. And because I can't allow my long to-read list to shorten, I've already bought several more books in the meantime.

I think I have my choice narrowed down to five that I might tackle next. They are:

St. Thomas Aquinas by G.K. Chesterton
St. Francis of Assisi by G.K. Chesterton
The Story of a Soul by St. Therese of Lisieux
The Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila
Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales

The first two are on the list because I'd like to know more about them both and I've heard that Chesterton's biographies are insightful. The next two are because those are the two great cloistered Carmelite nuns of the past that seem to have the most influence on Carmelite spirituality today. And the last one is on the list because some religious congregations follow the spirituality of St. Francis de Sales and it would be good for me to know a thing or two about his thought, not least because he's my confirmation saint. :)

This is off topic, but we need some more names in the Catholic tradition. Look, I just listed five saints up there and they only have three different names between them. It's a lovely mark of humility that everyone who enters religious life wants to take a saint's name, but it means you end up with a hundred Saint Francises and a hundred Saint Gregories, and every other female saint is some variation of Teresa or Catherine, and everyone, male or female, ends up with some form of Mary in there, and the result is that you'll never be able to remember the name of the religious you just met because all the names are alike!

And that reminds me of Thomas Merton's autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, in which he contemplates joining a large congregation of Franciscans. I have to quote it for you:

Turning over the pages of Butler's Lives of the Saints, I had looked for some name to take in religion-- indeed, that was a problem over which I had wasted an undue amount of time. The Province was a big one, and there were so many Friars in it that they had run out of all the names-- and you could not take a name that was already taken by someone else. I knew in advance that I could not be a John Baptist or an Augustine or Jerome or Gregory. I would have to find some outlandish name like Paphnutius (which was Father Irenaeus' suggestion). Finally I came across a Franciscan called Blessed John Spaniard and I thought that would sound fine.

I considered the possibility of myself running around in a brown robe and sandals, and imagined I heard the novice master saying: "Frater John Spaniard, go over there and scrub that floor." Or else he would put his head out of his room and say to one of the other novices: "Go and get Frater John Spaniard and bring him here," and then I would come humbly along the corridor in my sandals-- or rather our sandals-- with my eyes down, with the rapid but decorous gait of a young Friar who knew his business: Frater John Spaniard. It made a pleasant picture.

Merton ended up joining a Trappist congregation where he got no say in it at all; they simply assigned him the incongruous name of Louis. By that time he didn't care. I loved his book, not so much for what it revealed about Merton as for what it revealed about me. That man had my number!

But back to the five books, have ya'll read any of them? What do you think?

Naturally I'll probably end up just reading whichever one seems most attractive at the moment I finish the last sentence of The Cure d'Ars. That's how these things go. :)

Quot libros, quam breve tempus!

("So many books, so little time!")

Just reorganized my books. In spite of the book purge I conducted two years ago this double case doesn't fit all my books, but it has most of them.

See the two middle shelves there, the ones with the pictures? Those shelves contain nothing but books I have not read yet. There are some unread books on the other shelves as well. So if you ever recommend a book to me, and I tell you that I'll add it to the end of my long to-read list and might get to it in ten years, don't be offended. The picture explains why.

Ronald Knox on the decline of religion

The main causes of this decline, so far as causes need to be adduced for the defection of human wills, are manifest enough. Undoubtedly popular education and the spread of newspaper culture must be credited, in part, with the result: some of us would say that the mass of the people is now growing out of its old superstitions in the light of new knowledge; some of us would see, rather, the effect of reiterated catchwords upon minds trained to read but not trained to think. The industrial development of the country has added its influence, partly by focusing men's thoughts upon their material interests, partly by setting up, in England as elsewhere, a reaction against old faiths and old loyalties, crudely conceived as old fashioned. Further, the modern facilities for pleasurable enjoyment have killed, in great part, the relish for eternity. I do not know that this influence has been given its proper importance hitherto. Mass production has made luxury cheap; steam travel, motor-cars, and the penny post have brought it to our doors; anesthetics and the other triumphs of medicine have mitigated the penalties which attach to it. And the same causes which have multiplied pleasure have multiplied preoccupation. A rush age cannot be a reflective age.

--Ronald Knox, "The Belief of Catholics", 1927

Thoughts on the passage:

Trained to read but not trained to think: People seem to imagine that we're better at thinking than our ancestors were-- more logical, better able to follow a chain of reasoning to its correct conclusion. I think the opposite is true. Our age prefers to believe whatever feels good. The reason we think we're smarter than folks in (say) medieval times might be that we have wider literacy and better technology. But how is it used? The fact that I can read Sports Illustrated and laugh at LOLcats on the internet hardly makes me a better thinker.

Focusing men's thoughts upon their material interests: Look at the news and see how much our fluctuating wealth is taken as an indicator of the health of the nation. It's not a decline in morality but a decline in the Dow that casts the country into gloom. What a narrow view of life, to say the least.

I was recently with a group of old college friends, and one of them asked how our nation might recover from its current economic troubles. After we'd discussed it a little, he said that he thinks what America needs is to invent better stuff than the rest of the world in order to compete, and he added that what gives him most hope for the future is the quarterly issue of a magazine he gets on the latest technology. I had a feeling that we were missing the point. We seem far more obsessed with wealth than our ancestors were, even though (or rather because) we have so much more of it. "You cannot serve both God and money."

The modern facilities for pleasurable enjoyment have killed, in great part, the relish for eternity: Insightful, and if this was true in 1927, how much truer it is today, when our TVs and computers and iPods and cell phones ensure we need never be alone with our thoughts, never face ourselves as we truly are and realize our need. Even the process of dying is much less painful and probably doesn't offer as much inducement to reconcile with God as it used to (a hospice chaplain reflects on that here, and so does Richard John Neuhaus in a really, really good article on death here).

What I notice in general when I read people like Knox and G.K. Chesterton is that the trends they diagnosed in the 20's and 30's are all the same today, only accelerated. Probably the trends began well before that. We've been heading down this road for a long time now. Beats me where it ends.

Would you have admitted her?

Today I arrived home to a brown paper package sitting on the counter for me. It was a used book I'd ordered from half.com for a few dollars: Maria, by Maria von Trapp. Her first book, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, was published in 1949 and was the book on which The Sound of Music was based. Maria is a sort of sequel, published in 1972 and expanding on the story, offering lots more autobiographical information. We learn that she was an orphan, that she had a most unhappy childhood being raised by a distant relative who often beat her (he later died in an insane asylum), that she dumped her childhood faith but picked it up again at the end of her college years after a rather remarkable encounter with a Jesuit, and that one day when she was hiking on a glacier she saw a glorious sunset, asked God how she could repay Him for such a wonderful creation, and determined that the greatest thing she could do would be to join a convent. She left the hiking trip at once and grabbed the nearest train to Salzburg. That's the setup; here's the excerpt:

I still remember that as I arrived at the railroad station I saw a policeman standing there. I marched up to him and said, "Sir, could you please tell me which is the strictest convent in this town?"

He grinned at me and said, "I sure don't know. Ask this one, " pointing to a Capuchin monk.

So I strolled over to the monk and again said, "Sir, can you tell me which is the strictest convent in this town?"

He looked at me slightly amused and said, "Yes, you go down to the Salzach River and follow it upstream to the fourth bridge. Cross that bridge and you will see a red onion tower halfway up the hill. That is the Benedictine Abbey of Nonnberg, and they are the strictest around here."

I said "Thank you" and found my way.

In less than an hour I rang the bell and asked to see the boss. I have to laugh now when I think back on those days, because I certainly didn't know the proper way in which to address the people. I didn't know that you said "Father" to a priest and "Reverend Mother" to a nun, and not "sir" and "boss".

I was ushered into a room and, to my great amazment, it was partitioned in half by a big grill. Rather amused, I marched up and down in front of it. Hanging on the other side were oil paintings of abbesses long gone.

I had to wait quite some time before the door opened and in came a small frail nun with a cross on her chest, a big ring on her slender finger, and the kindest eyes that have ever looked at me.

After searching for a moment, a very dear voice said, "What can I do for you, my child?"

Now here I was straight from the glaciers, brown as milk chocolate. Over my left shoulder I still had the coil of ropes. On my back I had a very heavy knapsack. In my right hand I had an ice pick with which I stood like Napoleon, pronouncing, "I have come to stay!"

The meek and mild voice inquired, "Has somebody sent you, my child?"

I reared up to my five feet seven and a half inches and said, "Ha, if anybody had sent me, I wouldn't be here. I haven't obeyed anybody yet."

After these momentous words I was really and truly received into the Benedictine Abbey. The Reverend Mother must have had some other reason than the ones I gave her for taking me in. She never told me why I was admitted. As I look back on it now I cannot understand it because everything was set against it.

There at the abbey started two momentous years of my life.

Is this book on my side or not?

I'm not certain, but one thing I do know: inter-religious dialogue used to be a lot more spirited!

Also more alliterative.

The Scarlet Pimpernel

When I was eleven I read Gone With the Wind because my friend Suzanne already had. Good stuff, especially every scene with Rhett Butler. I also read A Tale of Two Cities, but found it boring because so much of it was over my head. I slogged through that one solely for the bragging rights. And on the easier side I read Hang Tough, Paul Mather, about a boy who just wants to play baseball but is forbidden to do so because he has leukemia. That got me started on sports books; the next year I began collecting everything John R. Tunis ever wrote.

But the book I discovered that year that I really really loved, the book I reread so perseveringly that its cover wore clean off, was The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy. The title character is a mysterious English nobleman who daringly rescues doomed French aristocrats from the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. The main character is Marguerite, a clever and beautiful woman who's married to an inane fop of a man, admires the Scarlet Pimpernel from afar, and gets blackmailed by the French agent Chauvelin. It's a very romantic book, in several senses of the word. Full of fun new vocabulary, too. I read it with a dictionary open on my lap because I was so engrossed by the story that I didn't want to miss any details. One sentence alone had three words I needed to look up: "...Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, who, in the guise of her lackey, was carrying a number of impedimenta...." (After some minutes I was able to ascertain that this means he was disguised as her servant and carrying the luggage.)

This reminiscing post was precipitated by the Errol Flynn movies I watched last week. They got me in a swashbuckling mood and reminded me that I own two movie versions of The Scarlet Pimpernel. One's from 1934 and stars Leslie Howard, and if you only know him as the ineffectual Ashley Wilkes, you need to see him in this part. He's so good, and very funny. "How I ever came up with it, I don't know, because it was the busiest moment of the day, damn me-- I was tying my cravat!" The problem with that movie is that Merle Oberon as Marguerite is severe and unfriendly-looking. Her eyebrows arch up and her mouth turns down so much that I can't feel sorry for her troubles. Well, I did pity her in one scene, when she went to Lord Grenville's ball dressed in nothing but an unsupportive bikini on top. Seriously, look at that thing! It might have fit well enough in 1934, but how embarrassing to show up in 1794 so underdressed! I don't hesitate to call it the worst costume design I've ever seen in a movie. And don't tell me that's not important; Sir Percy does not agree with you.

Then there's the 1982 TV movie, which was perfectly cast: Anthony Andrews as Sir Percy, Jane Seymour as Marguerite, and Ian McKellan as a deliciously insecure Chauvelin. Beautiful people wearing gorgeous clothes and having seriously fun adventures. I love watching Andrews switch between his silly affected manner and his more earnest tone, sometimes right in the middle of a sentence. And the love scenes... ah.... All three principal actors make you interested and make you care, something that only Leslie Howard achieved in the 1934 version.

Oh, the 1999 TV series with Richard Grant? I've seen bits of it on YouTube, and what I saw I disliked so much that I'm not especially tempted to watch more. Every now and then comes an adaptation of a book that completely violates the spirit of its source material, and this one looks like a fine example of that. In the book even the villain is gallantly courteous; in the TV show I see nothing but mean-spirited, humorless insults. It looks like there's a lot more brawn and much less brain involved in the rescues. Sir Percy isn't even handsome (let the full horror of those words sink in) and as for Marguerite, she's been severely let down by the costume and makeup department. For a character who's supposed to be the most beautiful woman in France, that's a real problem.

So forget that. Go rent the one with Anthony Andrews; it's fun right down to the curl on his forehead. :)

The How-To Book of the Mass

Michael Dubriel, a Catholic author and blogger, died suddenly a few days ago, as announced on the site of his wife Amy Wellborn, also a Catholic author and blogger.

I'd forgotten until today, but Dubriel wrote a book I really like: The How-To Book of the Mass. I read it two years ago when I'd just decided to become Catholic and I knew I needed to get a handle on the Mass. There seemed to be a lot of meaning in it that I was missing; the gestures and words would flow by in a stream so swift I couldn't catch and examine any of them. Dubriel's book was exactly what I wanted. He explains all the basics I didn't know and was too shy to ask-- how to genuflect, how to cross yourself with holy water, even why some Hispanics look like they're kissing their hands after making the Sign of the Cross (turns out they're making a little cross with forefinger and thumb and kissing that, as a sign of devotion). Then he also explains the theology of the Mass, the Sacrifice and the Real Presence, with heavy use of Scripture and quotes from the early Church Fathers. For each part he usually says something about its development: what it looked like in the year 300 A.D., what the Eastern Catholics do at this part, what Scripture it's taken from, what Pope stuck this prayer in there and why. And he writes quite a bit about how to enter spiritually into the Mass. One very useful recommendation along those lines was to kill your ego, especially if there's something about the way the Mass is being offered that you don't like. :)

It was a much richer book than I'd hoped for, given that it's written in a simple familiar style and looks like part of the "For Dummies" series. A few weeks after finishing it I started going to Mass every day-- mainly because I found a great parish (and even more mainly because of grace), but I know Dubriel's book helped.

Incidentally, I'd recommend it as therapy for traditional Catholics who love the Extraordinary Form of Mass but want to cure themselves of retching at the thought of the Ordinary Form. This book is entirely about the OF, and although it won't make you love the OF better than the EF, it does make the most of what the OF has got. Most opponents of the EF are so pleased to emphasize the hermeneutic of rupture as applied to the OF, but this book emphasizes the OF's historical continuity. It also plays up the ways that participation in the OF can be spiritually fruitful, and how to have a "full, active, and conscious participation," not superficially but interiorly.

So anyway, having been reminded that Dubriel wrote this book I loved, I feel a sense of gratitude and am sorrier for his loss. I highly, highly recommend the reading of his last column, which seems to have been written at the inspiration of God for the comfort of his family. "The big lie... is to think that if we say all the right prayers and live correctly, then nothing bad will ever happen to us."

Another book meme

Thanks to Mary Rose for tagging me! I like simple fun stuff like this.

The rules: Pass this on to 5 blogging friends. Open the closest book to you, not your favorite or most intellectual book, but the book closest to you at the moment, to page 56. Write the 5th sentence, as well as two to five sentences following that.

The book nearest me: Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska

Page 56, 5th sentence and a few after:

When I told this priest I was undergoing infernal tortures, he answered that he was not worried about my soul, because he saw in it a great grace of God. But I understood nothing of this, and not even the least glimmer of light broke through to my soul.

Then my physical strength began to fail me, and I could no longer carry out my duties....

Well, I don't think that passage is very self-explanatory, but that's what you get when you obey meme rules. :) In a nutshell, St. Faustina is describing a certain spiritual suffering she experienced early in her convent life, something often called "the dark night of the soul".

The Diary is an awesome book. If left to my own devices I might never have picked it up. I had some kind of prejudice against it, which I'm afraid had a great deal to do with my dislike of the blank expression on that painting of St. Faustina you always see... yes, I judged the book by its cover. (Here, by the way, is an actual photograph I like much better.) But then I went on my eight-day Ignatian retreat last June and Fr. Larry gave me a book to read for fun when I wasn't meditating, and when I devoured that book in short order, he gave me the big fat Diary and I promptly fell in love with it. But you know what, it's 11:15 pm already so I don't have time to say why.

Good night, dear friends, and as we say at the end of Compline, may the all-powerful Lord grant you a restful night and a peaceful death. Amen.

(Oh, as for the meme, I invite anyone who likes it to consider himself tagged.)

The Discarded Image, by C.S. Lewis

Not long ago I discovered this book-- something by C.S. Lewis that I had not read! My wonderful sister gave it to me for my birthday. :) It's not one of Lewis' specifically Christian works, but "An introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature". He gives this introduction not so much by talking about the literature itself, but by teaching the reader about the culture and worldview of the Middle Ages.

I like history for its own sake, but I think the book would have been interesting even apart from that, for the light it sheds on our own culture. Lewis wrote something about that in his essay "On the Reading of Old Books", arguing that it's parochial to restrict one's learning to one's own time and assume we must know best because we come latest. We may never find out what incorrect assumptions are common in our age if we don't step outside of it by reading works from other time periods.

Anyway, here are some quotes and ideas from Discarded Image that stood out to me. Of course they don't do justice to the whole book. Lewis' exact words are in quotes and my summaries are not.

"Savage beliefs are thought to be the spontaneous response of a human group to its environment." This can develop into "something more ethical, more philosophical, even more scientific," as probably occurred in ancient Egypt. But Medieval culture is like neither of these. It had an "overwhelmingly bookish or clerkly character... When we speak of the Middle Ages as the ages of authority we are usually thinking about the authority of the Church. But they were the age not only of her authority, but of authorities. If their culture is regarded as a response to environment, then the elements in that environment to which it responded most vigorously were manuscripts."

"At his most characteristic, medieval man was not a dreamer nor a wanderer. He was an organizer, a codifier, a builder of systems.... Of all our modern inventions I suspect that they would most have admired the card index."

Lewis spends most of the book describing "The Model", which is "the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, science, and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental Model of the Universe."

However, this Model is more important in art and literature than in religion: "We need to know something about the Model if we are to read Chaucer, but we can neglect it when we are reading St. Bernard.... The spiritual books are entirely practical-- like medical books."

"The insignificance (by cosmic standards) of the Earth became as much a commonplace to the medieval, as to the modern, thinker; it was part of the moralists' stock-in-trade, used, as Cicero uses it, to mortify human ambition..... The medieval Model is anthropoperipheral."

"If the reader will suspend his disbelief and exercise his imagination upon it even for a few minutes, I think he will become aware of the vast re-adjustment involved in a perceptive reading of the old poets. He will find his whole attitude to the universe inverted. In modern, that is, in evolutionary, thought Man stands at the top of a stair whose foot is lost in obscurity; in this, he stands at the bottom of a stair whose top is invisible with light." This difference "perhaps leaves no area and no level of consciousness unaffected."

"Perpetuity is only the attainment of an endless series of moments, each lost as soon as it is attained. Eternity is the actual and timeless fruition of illimitable life. Time is... a hopeless attempt to compensate for the transitoriness of its 'presents' by infinitely multiplying them. That is why Shakespeare's Lucrece calls it 'thou ceaseless lackey to eternity.'"

Lewis describes the Model of the heavens, the famous spheres that revolve around Earth which the medievals learned of from Aristotle, and then comments upon "how such a universe must have affected those who believed in it.... You must go out on a starry night and walk about for half an hour trying to see the sky in terms of the old cosmology. Remember that you now have an absolute Up and Down. The Earth is really the centre, really the lowest place; movement to it from whatever direction is downward movement. As a modern, you located the stars at a great distance. For distance you must now substitute that very special, and far less abstract, sort of distance which we call height; height, which speaks immediately to our muscles and nerves. The Medieval Model is vertiginous."

"All power, movement, and efficacy descend from God to the Primum Mobile [Prime Mover] and cause it to rotate. This moves the other spheres down to the last moving sphere, the Moon... Besides movement, the spheres transmit (to the Earth) what are called Influences." The Sun illuminates the whole universe; stars receive their light from the Sun. "Night is merely the conical shadow cast by our Earth... we are looking through darkness but not at darkness." Space isn't silent either; as Henryson wrote: "Every planet in his proper sphere / In moving makand harmony and sound." So a medieval man on a nocturnal walk was "looking up at a world lighted, warmed, and resonant with music." The modern man looking at a night sky feels he is looking out; medieval man was looking in.

One problem to solve was this: How can God be an Unmoved Mover? If he is Himself unchanging and motionless, how does he initiate the motion of the spheres? This had already been asked and answered by Aristotle: "'He moves as beloved.' He moves other things, that is, as an object of desire moves those who desire it. The Primum Mobile is moved by its love for God, and, being moved, communicates motion to the rest of the universe.... It will be noticed that when Dante ends the Comedy with 'the love that moves the Sun and other stars', he is speaking of love in the Aristotelian sense."

"Certainly there is a striking difference between this Model where God is much less the lover than the beloved and man is a marginal creature, and the Christian picture where the fall of man and the incarnation of God as man for man's redemption is central. There may perhaps.... be no absolute logical contradiction...But there remains, at the very least, a profound disharmony of atmospheres. That is why all this cosmology plays so small a part in the spiritual writers, and is not fused with high religious ardor in any writer I know except Dante himself."

Luxury and material splendor in the modern world need be connected with nothing but money. But in medieval royal courts, in Faerie, and in Heaven, "They were all symbolical or significant-- of sanctity, authority, valour, noble lineage, or, at the very worst, of power. They were associated, as modern luxury is not, with graciousness and courtesy. They could therefore be ingenuously admired without degradation for the admirer."

"Nearly all moralists before the 18th century regarded Reason as the organ of morality.... To recognize a duty was to perceive a truth, not because you had a good heart but because you were a rational being."

To the Greeks history was meaningless flux or cyclic reiteration. Significance was sought not in becoming but in being, "not in history but in metaphysics, mathematics, and theology." For Hebrews their whole past was "a revelation of the purposes of Jahweh. Christianity, going on from there, makes world-history in its entirety a single, transcendentally significant, story with a well-defined plot pivoted on Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Judgment."

(The above passage is similar to one in G.K. Chesterton's Everlasting Man. You find a lot of Chesterton in Lewis' work, as he himself frankly acknowledged.)

Medieval narratives about the past are lacking in a sense of period. For us the past is a costume play, and this helps us more than we suspect towards subtler discriminations between different ages. "Where even the most obvious and superficial distinctions between one century and another were ignored, the profounder difference of temper and mental climate were naturally not dreamed of."

"Medieval and 19th-century man agreed that their present was no very admirable age; not to be compared (said one) with the glory that was, not to be compared (said the other) with the glory that is still to come. The odd thing is that the first view seems to have bred on the whole a more cheerful temper. Historically as well as cosmically, medieval man stood at the foot of a stairway; looking up, he felt delight. The backward, like the upward, glance exhilarated him with a majestic spectacle, and humility was rewarded with the pleasures of admiration... The saints looked down on one's spiritual life, the kings, sages, and warriors on one's secular life, the great lovers of old on one's amours, to foster, encourage, and instruct. There were friends, ancestors, patrons in every age. One had one's place, however modest, in a great succession; one need be neither proud nor lonely."

"Marcus Aurelius wished that men would love the universe as a man can love his own city. I believe that something like this was really possible in the period I am discussing."

We get the impression from medieval poetry "that the poets were unable to keep to the point." But it was deliberately done. Digressions "can be regarded as an expression of the same impulse we see at work in much medieval architecture and decoration. We may call it the love of the labyrinthine; the tendency to offer to the mind or the eye something that cannot be taken in at a glance."

"Far from feigning originality, as a modern plagiarist would, they are apt to conceal it... If you had asked Lazamon or Chaucer, 'Why do you not make up a brand-new story on your own?' I think they might have replied (in effect) 'Surely we are not yet reduced to that?' Spin something out of one's own head when the world teems with so many noble deeds, wholesome examples, pitiful tragedies, strange adventures, and merry jests which have never yet been set forth quite so well as they deserve?"

"I think the majority of the audience, then as now, could hardly conceive the activity of invention at all. It is said that people pointed out Dante not as the man who made the Comedy but as the man who had been in Hell. Even today there are those, some of them critics, who believe every novel and even every lyric to be autobiographical."

Epilogue: "I have made no serious effort to hide the fact that the old Model delights me as I believe it delighted our ancestors. Few constructions of the imagination seem to me to have combined splendour, sobriety, and coherence in the same degree. It is possible that some readers have long been itching to remind me that it had a serious defect; it was not true.
"I agree. It was not true. But...."

There was a change "from a cosmology in which it was axiomatic that 'all perfect things precede all imperfect things' to one in which it is axiomatic that 'the starting point (Entwicklungsgrund) is always lower than what is developed'.... This revolution was certainly not brought about by the discovery of new facts. When I was a boy I believed that 'Darwin discovered evolution' and that the far more general, radical, and even cosmic developmentalism which till lately dominated all popular thought was a superstructure raised on the biological theorem. This view has been sufficiently disproved. The statement which I have just quoted about the Entwicklungsgrund was made by Schellin in 1812. In him, in Keats, in Wagner's tetralogy, in Goethe, in Herder, the change to the new point of view has already taken place.... The demand for a developing world-- a demand obviously in harmony both with the revolutionary and the romantic temper-- grows up first; when it is full grown the scientists go to work and discover the evidence on which our belief in that sort of universe would now be held to rest.... I do not at all mean that these new phenomena are illusory. Nature has all sorts of phenomena in stock and can suit many different tastes.... Nature gives most of her evidence in answer to the questions we ask her."

"I am only suggesting considerations that may induce us to regard all Models in the right way, respecting each and idolising none. [Each Model] reflects the prevalent psychology of an age almost as much as it reflects the state of that age's knowledge. Hardly any battery of new facts could have persuaded a Greek that the universe had an attribute so repugnant to him as infinity; hardly any such battery could persuade a modern that it is hierarchical."

"It is not impossible that our own Model will die a violent death, ruthlessly smashed by an unprovoked assault of new facts-- unprovoked as the nova of 1572.  But I think it is more likely to change when, and because, far-reaching changes in the mental temper of our descendants demand that it should."

Fish on Friday

Fish on Friday by Fr. Leonard Feeney, published in 1934, was very popular in its day and is now available in its entirety online. It's so far from the author's later Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus controversy that he actually affirms, in the sketch titled "Good Christians", that non-Catholics can and do go to Heaven.

It's a really good book! Well, some parts seem too sentimental to me, and other parts are too wordy, but on the whole it's very absorbing. I was really moved by The Journey; especially in the last paragraph it expresses what I feel about so many children. And I loved This Little Thing from beginning to end; Sister Bridget's thoughts towards the end are so realistic and so hilarious. It also contains this line:

Sister Bridget always managed a tear or two at this occasion (for there is always a sense of sadness attending the completion of any task, however agreeable), supplemented by a kiss, a holy picture, and a plea for prayers in behalf of those dreadfully desperate and indefinite desires all nuns possess in the form of “very special intentions.”

That cracked me up because in my parish it's the senior pastor, a six-foot-plus ex-Marine, who's always making the congregation say a Hail Mary at the end of Mass "for some very special intentions". It's good to know the honorable provenance of that practice!

Then I thought this, from Cousin Willie about Lourdes, was an insightful point:

But the statistics show that it is during the last festival, namely the solemn procession of the Blessed Sacrament, that Our Lady’s intercession is likely to be most potent and a miracle most likely to occur. And little wonder that this is so. For the solemn blessing of the sick may be called, not irreverently, a “challenge” to God’s pity. His suffering children are made a spectacle to Him as He passes in Eucharistic guise. He is constrained to pause at each cot and bless each sufferer, and to acknowledge each human affliction by individual recognition. Thousands are watching, and the honor of His Virgin Mother is at stake. Our Lord will be heedless to cure at His own peril.

Anyway, if you find yourself at a loss during my blog fast, you could give Fish on Friday a try. :)

Ronald Knox, by Evelyn Waugh

One of the books I devoured over Lent was Msgr. Ronald Knox, by Evelyn Waugh. Knox (1888-1957) was a priest, and Waugh (1903-1966) is probably best known for Brideshead Revisited; both were converts to Catholicism and both were successful writers.

It's a bit curious that I so enjoyed-- or even began to read at all-- the biography of the one by the other, since I'd never read a word by either of them before! But Knox was a interesting character and Waugh's a heck of a biographer. (And they were friends, though you'd hardly know it from this book.) Knox comes across as diffident, introverted, and a bit gloomy, as well as hilarious, brilliant, and great company. I suppose that means Waugh has drawn a nuanced portrait.

It's just a bit depressing that finishing this one book has added about twenty others to the always-growing list of stuff I want to read. Knox seems to have turned out all sorts of interesting stuff, and my ignorance of anything by Waugh is apparently a shameful gap in my reading. Alas that many of the Knox works I'm most interested in seem to be out of print and available only as very old and expensive copies. There's The Rich Young Man, Difficulties, Let Dons Delight, God and the Atom, his singlehanded translation of the entire Bible together with an NT commentary, A Spiritual Aeneid, The Mass in Slow Motion, On Englishing the Bible, Bridegroom and Bride, Enthusiasm, and several volumes of sermons and conferences. He's written lots more; those are just the ones I want to tackle first. :)

I'm going to die with a thousand wonderful books still unread; I may as well resign myself to it now.

Want to read an excerpt from the biography that contains an excerpt of a poem Knox wrote when he was sixteen? Shut up, I'm quoting it anyway.

...In the summer of 1906 he issued his first book, Signa Severa, bound in Eton blue and published by Spottiswoode, a collection of verses in English, Latin, and Greek, dating from July 1903 to May 1906. The little volume ran into six editions, but copies are jealously guarded by their owners and seldom come into the market. He continued to write verses durning his last half and published a selection of them four years leater in his Oxford book, Juxta Salices. His facility and ingenuity were dazzling. The best known and most quoted of these verses is 'The Wilderness', which appeared in the Eton Poetry Book and was learned by many generations of Etonians. It was written when he was sixteen, under the spur, it is said, of finding a neat rhyme for hollyhock. It is a fanciful plea for the planting of a garden in Schoolyard.

Powers of the Bursary [it begins] who on a cursory
Glance at the ruinous state of Schoolyard,
Made us travel securely on gravel, --
Is not that gravel a little too hard?
Does not the scenery call for some greenery?
Call for a garden, in which we might lop
Calceolarias of suitable areas,
Worthy to rest on the bosoms of Pop?

and contains the lines:

Look you where Gaffney [the School Clerk] is tending the Daphne!
Idly the pedagogues murmur and fret,
Clamouring 'Tolle hoc improbum hollyhock!
Quid est absentiae cum mignonette?'

From what I remember of high school, sixteen-year-old boys seem to have changed a lot.

And check this out:

'During my last half [at Eton],' Ronald wrote in A Spiritual Aeneid, 'I am afraid I was something of a nuisance to the authorities.'

Such misdemeanours as are remembered would not trouble any but a very delicate conscience. He annoyed the Headmaster by a joke at Hugh Dalton's expense. 'Sunday Questions' are an institution at Eton. Boys are required to write a short essay for their division masters on a set biblical theme. The Sixth Form do this for the Headmaster. The questions were sent to College, and Oppidan Sixth Formers sent fags to collect them. One Sunday Lyttelton asked: 'What are the oldest parts of the book of Exodus?' Ronald intercepted Dalton's copy and changed 'oldest' to 'oddest'. The astute young politician quoted the grosser texts from the book and attached to his paper the question in the form in which he had received it. Next day inquiries were made and Ronald confessed. Lyttelton, a humourless man, thought this conduct unbecoming to the Captain of the School.

"The Surprise" by G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton's play The Surprise was published posthumously and never performed in his lifetime, but EWTN aired a filmed version of it just before Christmas last month. It was a very low-budget operation but I really enjoyed it, particularly since it had Mark Shea playing one of the guards and a great performance from Kevin O'Brien (an actual actor!)

The play includes this interesting challenge: is it possible to produce a captivating story without a villain? Can you have conflict, drama, tension and resolution when all of your characters are good and all of their actions are good throughout the entire play? Chesterton's answer touches on the intersection of God's sovereignty and man's free will, and his final line packs a lot of punch.

The question reminded me strongly of a scene I've always loved from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Two Towers. Tolkien had lots of villains, of course, and a few characters (Boromir, Denethor, Theoden, Eowyn, Saruman) who were interesting mixes of bad with good, or nobility with debasement, or wisdom with immaturity. But in one scene, the conflict comes from two of the most heroically good characters in the whole trilogy. It happens when Faramir's men capture Frodo and Sam in Ithilien. Faramir and Frodo are immediately at odds: Faramir is charged with the security of the border region and so he has to know what Frodo's business is and not let him wander free in Ithilien, while Frodo is charged with a quest to save all Middle-Earth and so he has to keep his secret and get away. Faramir won't torture Frodo, or even imprison him if he can possibly avoid it, and Frodo for his part will not lie to Faramir.

So the conflict is expressed in a conversation that is equal parts tense and courteous, in which Faramir and Frodo both use their wits and insight to the best of their ability and quickly grow in their respect for one another as they try to defeat each other. Resolution is brought about by an interruption from a third heroically good (if not terribly sharp-witted) character: Sam.

Needless to say, Jackson's movie butchered this scene and sadly altered the character of Faramir. But I loved the movies for what they did well, so we'll ignore the parts they couldn't handle.

There, two of my favorite authors in one post. :)

Book meme!

Adrienne nabbed me, and this looks fun. Here be the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

The two nearest books are a Bible and breviary, but rather than quote Scripture I'll grab the next nearest book: Fire Within by Thomas Dubay. The sentences called for form their own paragraph:

If the reader recoils at the thought of much solitude and at the unappealing prospects of fitting it into a crowded schedule, St. Teresa is an understanding mentor. She adverts to our needing to learn to like and to appreciate being alone with God, and she is mindful that we need to get used to it, that it does not come easily at the outset. Determination is therefore in order to see to it that the first things do come first, that we are prepared to provide the suitable time and place for growth to happen.

Oooh, I was planning on reading this book soon and it sounds like it'll be good. :) I tag whoever wishes to play!

Cardinal Newman fisks a Protestant

I'm going to post this big long thing in the hope that somewhere out there is another Catholic nerd who will find it just as hilarious as I did when I discovered it. :)

In 1851, John Henry Newman (who wasn't a cardinal yet; this was six years after his conversion from Anglicanism) gave a series of talks which were later published as "Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England". Lecture 6 described the Prejudiced Man and his view of Catholics. The whole thing is clever and incisive; those interested may read it here at the excellent, excellent newmanreader.org. But the part that had me laughing out loud was Newman's point-by-point critique of a non-Catholic's observations of the rite of Benediction. Newman had a caustic wit and really let it loose here. (Please don't be offended, dear Protestants who may read this blog-- he's not tearing into all Protestants, just the ones who judge what they barely know. If you saw the kind of stuff that got published about Catholics in the 1800's, of which Newman gives only a mild example, you'd be the first to agree that the perpetrators deserved everything he gave 'em.)

In this matter, my Brothers, as I have already said, the plain truth is the keenest of satires; and therefore, instead of using any words of my own, I shall put before you a Protestant's account of a Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, which he went to see in the Chapel of the Fathers of the Oratory in London. I quote his words from a publication of an important body, the British Reformation Society, established in the year 1827, and supported, I believe, by a number of eminent persons, noblemen, gentlemen, and ministers of various denominations. The periodical I speak of is called The British Protestant, or Journal of the Religious Principles of the Reformation. It would seem to be one of the Society's accredited publications, as it has its device upon the title-page. In the 62nd Number of this work, being the Number for February, 1850, we are presented with "Extracts from the Journal of a Protestant Scripture Reader." This gentleman, among his missionary visits to various parts of London, dropt in, it seems, on Tuesday, January 8th, to the Roman Catholic Chapel in King William Street; which, he commences his narrative by telling us, for "the large roses of every colour, and laurel, was more like the flower-shops in the grand row of Covent Garden than a place of worship." Well, he had a right to his opinion here as much as another; and I do not mean to molest him in it. Nor shall I say anything of his account of the Sermon, which was upon one of the January Saints, and which he blames for not having in it the name of Jesus, or one word of Scripture from beginning to end; not dreaming that a Rite was to follow, in which we not only bow before the Name, but worship the real and substantial presence of our exalted Lord.

I need hardly observe to you, my Brothers, that the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament is one of the simplest rites of the Church. The priests enter and kneel down; one of them unlocks the Tabernacle, takes out the Blessed Sacrament, inserts it upright in a Monstrance of precious metal, and sets it in a conspicuous place above the altar, in the midst of lights, for all to see. The people then begin to sing; meanwhile the Priest twice offers incense to the King of heaven, before whom he is kneeling. Then he takes the Monstrance in his hands, and turning to the people, blesses them with the Most Holy, in the form of a cross, while the bell is sounded by one of the attendants to call attention to the ceremony. It is our Lord's solemn benediction of His people, as when He lifted up His hands over the children, or when He blessed His chosen ones when He ascended up from Mount Olivet. As sons might come before a parent before going to bed at night, so, once or twice a week the great Catholic family comes before the Eternal Father, after the bustle or toil of the day, and He smiles upon them, and sheds upon them the light of His countenance. It is a full accomplishment of what the Priest invoked upon the Israelites, "The Lord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord show His face to thee and have mercy on thee; the Lord turn His countenance to thee and give thee peace." Can there be a more touching rite, even in the judgment of those who do not believe in it? How many a man, not a Catholic, is moved, on seeing it, to say "Oh, that I did but believe it!" when he sees the Priest take up the Fount of Mercy, and the people bent low in adoration! It is one of the most beautiful, natural, and soothing actions of the Church— not so, however, in the judgment of our young Protestant Scripture Reader, to whom I now return.

This Protestant Scripture Reader then, as he calls himself, enters the chapel, thinking, of course, he knows all about everything. He is the measure of everything, or at least of everything Popish. Popery he knows perfectly well, in substance, in spirit, in drift, in results; and he can interpret all the details when they come before him at once, by this previous, or what a theologian might term "infused," knowledge. He knows, and has known from a child, that Popery is a system of imposture, nay, such brazen imposture, that it is a marvel, or rather miracle, that any one can be caught by it—a miracle, that is, of Satan: for without an evil influence it is quite impossible any single soul could believe what the Protestant Scripture Reader would call so "transparent a fraud." As a Scripture Reader he knows well the text, Second of Thessalonians, chapter two, verse eleven, "He shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie," and he applies it to the scene before him. He knows that it is the one business of the Priest to take in the people, and he knows that the people are so inconceivably brutish that nothing is too gross or absurd a trick to take them in withal. If the Priest were to put up a scarecrow, they, like the silly birds, would run away as if it were a man; and he has only to handle his balls or cards, and flourish them about, and they take him for a god. Indeed, we all know, he gives out he is a god, and can do what he pleases, for it is sin to doubt it. It is most wonderful, certainly, as to this Popery, that in spite of the Parliament all in a bustle, passing laws, as if against typhus or cholera, yet there it is, and spread it will; however, Satan is the father of lies; that is sufficient. With this great principle, I say, clearly impressed upon his mind, he walks into the chapel, knowing well he shall find some juggling there; accordingly, he is not at all surprised at the scene which passes before him. He looks on at his ease, and draws up his own account of it, all the time that the Catholic people are bowing and singing, and the Priest incensing; and his account runs thus:—

"After the sermon," he tells us (I am quoting the very words of his Journal), "another young priest came in with a long wand in his hand, and an extinguisher on the top of it, and a small candle, and he began to light others." "Another young priest:" he thinks we are born priests; "priest" is a sort of race, or animal, or production, as oxen or sheep may be, and there are young priests and old priests, and black priests and white priests, and perhaps men priests and women priests; and so in came this "other young priest" with a wand. "With a wand:" he evidently thinks there is something religious about this lighter and extinguisher; it is a conjuror's wand; you will, I think, see presently I am borne out in saying this. He proceeds: "The next part of the play was four priests coming to the altar" (it is as I said; everything is a priest), "four priests and Gordon in the middle:" this is a mistake, and an unwarrantable and rude use of the name of one of the Fathers of the London Oratory, my dear brother and friend, the Reverend Philip Gordon—for it was not he, and he was not a priest; accordingly, I should leave the name out, except that it adds a good deal to the effect of the whole. "One of them," he proceeds, "took from a small cupboard on the altar," that is, from the tabernacle, "a gold star;" this is the head of the Monstrance, in which is placed the Blessed Sacrament, "and screwed it on to a candlestick," that is, the foot of the Monstrance, "and placed it on the top of the altar, under the form of a beehive, supported by four pillars," that is, under the canopy. He calls the head of the Monstrance a star, because it consists of a circle surrounded by rays; and he seems to think it in some way connected with the season of the year, the Epiphany, when the Star appeared to the Wise Men.

"The Star," he proceeds, "glittered like diamonds, for it had a round lamp in the middle of it;" I suppose he means the glass covering the Blessed Sacrament, which reflected the light, and you will see clearly, as he goes on, that he actually thinks the whole congregation was worshipping this star and lamp. "This Star glittered like diamonds, for it had a round lamp in the middle of it; when placed under the beehive, the four priests began to burn incense, waving a large thing like a lanthorn" (the thurible) "towards the Star, and bowing themselves to kiss the foot of the altar before the Star." Now observe, my Brothers, I repeat, I am not blaming this person for not knowing a Catholic rite, which he had no means of knowing, but for thinking he knows it, when he does not know it, for coming into the chapel, with this most coxcombical idea in his head, that Popery is a piece of mummery, which any intelligent Protestant can see through, and therefore being not at all surprised, but thinking it very natural, when he finds four priests, a young priest with a wand, and a whole congregation, worshipping a gold star glittering like diamonds with a lamp in it. This is what I mean by prejudice.

Now you may really have a difficulty in believing that I have interpreted him rightly; so let me proceed. "The next piece acted was, one of them went to bring down the Star, and put it on the altar, while another put something like a white shawl round Gordon's shoulders." True; he means the veil which is put upon the Priest, before he turns round with the Blessed Sacrament in his hand. "Gordon next takes the Star, and, turning his face to the people, to raise up the Star, with part of the shawl round the candlestick, the other two priests, one on each side of him, drawing the shawl, it showed a real piece of magic art." Now what makes this so amusing to the Catholic is, that, as far as the priest's actions go, it is really so accurately described. It is the description of one who has his eyes about him, and makes the best of them, but who, as he goes on, is ever putting his own absurd comment on everything which occurs in succession. Now, observe, he spoke of "magic;" let us see what the magic is, and what becomes of the Star, the lamp, and the candlestick with the shawl round it.

"As Gordon raised the Star, with his back to all the lighted candles on the altar, he clearly showed the Popish deceit, for in the candlestick there is a bell." Here is his first great failure of fact; he could not be looking at two places at once; he heard the bell, which the attendant was ringing at one side; he did not see it; where could it be? his ready genius, that is, the genius of his wonderful prejudice about us, told him at once where it was. It was a piece of priestcraft, and the bell was concealed inside the foot of the candlestick;—listen. "As Gordon raised the Star, with his back turned to all the lighted candles on the altar, he clearly showed the Popish deceit; for in the candlestick there is a bell, that rung three times of its own accord, to deceive the blind fools more; and the light through the shawl showed so many colours, as Father Gordon moved his body; the bell ringing they could not see, for the candlestick was covered with part of this magic shawl, and Gordon's finger at work underneath."

Such is his account of the rite of Benediction; he is so densely ignorant of us, and so supremely confident of his knowledge, that he ventures to put in print something like the following rubrical direction for its celebration:—

First, a young priest setteth up a golden, diamond-like star, with a lamp in it, sticking it on to the top of a candlestick, then he lighteth fifty candles by means of a wand with an extinguisher and wax candle upon it; then four priests bow, burn incense, and wave a lanthorn before the star; then one of the priests, hiding what he is at, by means of a great shawl about his hands and the foot of the candlestick, taketh up said candlestick, with the lamp and gold star glittering like diamonds, and beginneth secretly to tinkle with his finger a bell hid in its foot; whereupon the whole congregation marvelleth much, and worshippeth star, lamp and candlestick incontinently.

He ends with the following peroration:—"This the power of priests; they are the best play actors in this town. I should be glad to see this published, that I might take it to Father Gordon, to see if he could contradict a word of it." Rather, such is the power of prejudice, by good luck expressed in writing, and given to the world, as a specimen of what goes on, without being recorded, in so many hundred thousands of minds. The very confidence with which he appeals to the accuracy of his testimony only shows how prejudice can create or colour, where facts are harmless or natural. It is superior to facts, and lives in a world of its own.

Nor would it be at all to the purpose to object, that, had he known what the rite really meant, he would quite as much, or even more, have called it idolatry. The point is not what he would think of our rites, if he understood them exactly, for I am not supposing his judgment to be worth anything at all, or that we are not as likely to be right as an individual Scripture Reader; the question is not, what he would judge, but what he did think, and how he came to think it. His prejudice interpreted our actions.

Exmas and Crissmas, by C.S. Lewis

Some years ago when we were clearing out my grandparents' house, I raided the bookshelf and came away with one priceless treasure: an old edition of God in the Dock by C. S. Lewis, engraved on the flyleaf with my grandfather's name. It's a collection of Lewis' insights in bite-sized pieces. Since today is the beginning of the Advent season, I offer the funniest essay of the book for your enjoyment. This is a look at how the British kept Christmas fifty years ago, written as if Herodotus, a Greek historian of the 5th century B.C., had landed there and made a careful record of it with his outsider's eye. But you don't need to know anything about Britain or Herodotus to recognize modern-day America in the essay. All that's changed is that every other house now has a six-foot blow-up transparent snow globe with lights, falling snow, and its own soundtrack, on the front lawn!

One more note: I only just realized that Niatirb is Britain spelled backwards. Here I've wondered for years where Lewis got the name....

Exmas and Crissmas
A Lost Chapter from Herodotus

And beyond this there lies in the ocean, turned towards the west and north, the island of Niatirb which Hecataeus indeed declares to be the same size and shape as Sicily, but it is larger, though in calling it triangular a man would not miss the mark. It is densely inhabited by men who wear clothes not very different from the other barbarians who occupy the north western parts of Europe though they do not agree with them in language. These islanders, surpassing all the men of whom we know in patience and endurance, use the following customs.

In the middle of winter when fogs and rains most abound they have a great festival which they call Exmas and for fifty days they prepare for it in the fashion I shall describe. First of all, every citizen is obliged to send to each of his friends and relations a square piece of hard paper stamped with a picture, which in their speech is called an Exmas-card. But the pictures represent birds sitting on branches, or trees with a dark green prickly leaf, or else men in such garments as the Niatirbians believe that their ancestors wore two hundred years ago riding in coaches such as their ancestors used, or houses with snow on their roofs. And the Niatirbians are unwilling to say what these pictures have to do with the festival; guarding (as I suppose) some sacred mystery. And because all men must send these cards the marketplace is filled with the crowd of those buying them, so that there is great labour and weariness.

But having bought as many as they suppose to be sufficient, they return to their houses and find there the like cards which others have sent to them. And when they find cards from any to whom they also have sent cards, they throw them away and give thanks to the gods that this labour at least is over for another year. But when they find cards from any to whom they have not sent, then they beat their breasts and wail and utter curses against the sender; and, having sufficiently lamented their misfortune, they put on their boots again and go out into the fog and rain and buy a card for him also. And let this account suffice about Exmas-cards.

They also send gifts to one another, suffering the same things about the gifts as about the cards, or even worse. For every citizen has to guess the value of the gift which every friend will send to him so that he may send one of equal value, whether he can afford it or not. And they buy as gifts for one another such things as no man ever bought for himself. For the sellers, understanding the custom, put forth all kinds of trumpery, and whatever, being useless and ridiculous, they have been unable to sell throughout the year they now sell as an Exmas gift. And though the Niatirbians profess themselves to lack sufficient necessary things, such as metal, leather, wood and paper, yet an incredible quantity of these things is wasted every year, being made into the gifts.

But during these fifty days the oldest, poorest, and most miserable of the citizens put on false beards and red robes and walk about the market-place; being disguised (in my opinion) as Cronos. And the sellers of gifts no less than the purchasers become pale and weary, because of the crowds and the fog, so that any man who came into a Niatirbian city at this season would think some great public calamity had fallen on Niatirb. This fifty days of preparation is called in their barbarian speech the Exmas Rush.

But when the day of the festival comes, then most of the citizens, being exhausted with the Rush, lie in bed till noon. But in the evening they eat five times as much supper as on other days and, crowning themselves with crowns of paper, they become intoxicated. And on the day after Exmas they are very grave, being internally disordered by the supper and the drinking and reckoning how much they have spent on gifts and on the wine. For wine is so dear among the Niatirbians that a man must swallow the worth of a talent before he is well intoxicated.

Such, then, are their customs about the Exmas. But the few among the Niatirbians have also a festival, separate and to themselves, called Crissmas, which is on the same day as Exmas. And those who keep Crissmas, doing the opposite to the majority of the Niatirbians, rise early on that day with shining faces and go before sunrise to certain temples where they partake of a sacred feast. And in most of the temples they set out images of a fair woman with a new-born Child on her knees and certain animals and shepherds adoring the Child. (The reason of these images is given in a certain sacred story which I know but do not repeat.)

But I myself conversed with a priest in one of these temples and asked him why they kept Crissmas on the same day as Exmas; for it appeared to me inconvenient. But the priest replied, "It is not lawful, O stranger, for us to change the date of Crissmas, but would that Zeus would put it into the minds of the Niatirbians to keep Exmas at some other time or not to keep it at all. For Exmas and the Rush distract the minds even of the few from sacred things. And we indeed are glad that men should make merry at Crissmas; but in Exmas there is no merriment left." And when I asked him why they endured the Rush, he replied, "It is, O Stranger, a racket;" using (as I suppose) the words of some oracle and speaking unintelligibly to me (for a racket is an instrument which the barbarians use in a game called tennis).

But what Hecataeus says, that Exmas and Crissmas are the same, is not credible. For first, the pictures which are stamped on the Exmas-cards have nothing to do with the sacred story which the priests tell about Crissmas. And secondly, the most part of the Niatirbians, not believing the religion of the few, nevertheless send the gifts and cards and participate in the Rush and drink, wearing paper caps. But it is not likely that men, even being barbarians, should suffer so many and great things in honour of a god they do not believe in. And now, enough about Niatirb.