Lord, Open My Heart

Posted on February 6, 2012 by wjduquette

Julie Davis has a new e-book out: Lord, Open My Heart — Daily Scriptural Reflections for Lent. It’s $0.99 at the Kindle Store; I’m not sure whether it’s available for other e-book platforms or not. (Julie will no doubt chime in and let us know.)

I’ve gotten a copy of the book…but I confess, I’ve not yet read it. I mean, really: it’s a day-by-day book of scriptural reflections for use during Lent, and Lent is nearly upon us. So I’m saving it. On the other hand, I didn’t want to wait to say anything about it until I had read it, because that would be when Lent is over, and that’s too late for this year.

So c’mon. $0.99. You know you want to.

Changing Scripture to Suit

Posted on January 31, 2012 by wjduquette

This news item disturbs me greatly, if it’s true. It seems that Wycliffe Bible Translators, who we supported for many years, has been producing Arabic and Turkish translations of the Bible with the words “Father” and “Son” replaced with “Allah” and “his Messiah”, so as not to offend Muslim readers.

I understand the need to reach Muslims with the Christian faith. But in my reading of history, changing the words of scripture in this way is always a bad sign. If this is true, and if we still supported WBT financially, we would certainly stop doing so.

Update: Per Wycliffe’s web site, the story isn’t true. This is a relief, as I did not enjoy thinking poorly of them.

Update: Looking deeper, there seems to be more to this story. If the organization Biblical Missiology is to be believed, they have had considerable dialog with Wycliffe about this, and they have what appears to be a record of it. If this record is accurate, WBT is maintaining that they are translating the terms accurately into various languages while avoiding connotations that would be weird to speakers of those languages, and Biblical Missiology is maintaining that they are going too far, so as to lose the original meaning—and in some cases unnecessarily. In this light, WBT’s statement, linked above, could simply mean, “No, we aren’t going too far.” There are a few examples in Biblical Missiology’s record; check it for yourself.

The Human Wisdom of St. Thomas

Posted on January 28, 2012 by wjduquette

It’s nicely coincident to my current series of posts that today is the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas. In addition to being one of the greatest thinkers in the history of the world, he is also my elder brother in the Dominican order, and my patron saint.

Recently I got a little book by Josef Pieper called The Human Wisdom of St. Thomas: A Breviary of Philosophy. I say that it’s by Josef Pieper, by that’s misleading—except for a brief forward, all of the text comes from St. Thomas’ own writings. Pieper has simply selected them and arranged them in an interesting and useful way.

Although St. Thomas is one of the great philosophers, he was primarily a theologian, and philosophy, the “handmaiden of theology”, was simply one of the tools he used to illuminate the glory of God. Thus, his philosophy is apparent throughout his writings…but he never attempted to write down his philosophy all in one place. It makes it hard to study.

What Pieper has done is pull brief quotations from across the vast expanse of Thomas’ work, and arrange them by topic…and then arrange them within each topic so that they almost form a continuous thread. His desire for this book was that the would-be Thomist would read a bit of it every day, so that Thomas’ principles and conclusions would sink in.

As an example of the style, the third section is titled (in Thomas’ own words),

There can be good without evil, but there cannot be evil without good.

The quotes in this section all build on this theme. Partway down the first page, for example, we see these three related thoughts:

No essence is in itself evil. Evil has no essence.

Evil consists entirely of not-being.

Nothing can be called evil insofar as it has being, but only insofar as it is deprived of part of its being.

Thus, a man who does evil is one who turns from that which would perfect him to that which diminishes him, makes him less a man. And yet, what remains of him is still good.

Pieper does provide a detailed set of citations at the end of the book; thus, I know that the four quotes I listed here are from the Summa Theologiae, the Summa Contra Gentiles, and from one of the “disputed questions”. Pieper also pulls quotes from the Compendium Theologiae, the commentaries on scripture, the commentaries on Aristotle, and a number of other short works.

In short, the whole book is remarkably pithy, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in St. Thomas and his thought. The joy of philosophy is the wonder at and contemplation of the richness of the world than it engenders, and the briefly stated ideas in this book are an outstanding place to get started with the wondering and the contemplating.

Requiem for the Unborn

Posted on January 22, 2012 by wjduquette

So last night the whole family went down to the Cathedral of the Angels for the annual Requiem for the Unborn. This mass is held every year on the Saturday nearest to the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, which is 22 January, or today. It is a funeral mass for the the victims of abortion over the past year, and particularly for those aborted in the city of Los Angeles on the day of the requiem. At the end of the mass, one candle is lit for each of them, and placed around the altar; and then silence is maintained. This year there were 150 candles; on average, 150 unborn people are being killed each day in the City of Los Angeles, and we were silent for 150 seconds.

Progress is clearly being made. There were 180 candles last year, if we recall correctly; and at the first Requiem for the Unborn (this year’s was the ninth) there were over 450.

The celebrant was our new bishop, Archbishop José Gomez; also in attendance were the remaining bishops of the archdiocese (including Cardinal Mahoney) many priests and deacons, the seminarians from our seminary, many sisters, a sizable cohort of the Knights of Columbus, and many, many just plain folks like us. The Cathedral was packed.

We had a surprise guest, Cardinal Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, Australia, who concelebrated the mass with Archbishop Gomez and Cardinal Mahoney. I have no idea what Cardinal Pell is doing in Los Angeles, and he didn’t speak at the mass.

Archbishop Gomez gave the homily, naturally. I was eager to hear it, as this is the first chance I’d had to hear him since he became our bishop. The gospel text concerned the Magi and King Herod, the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt, and Herod’s slaughter of the Holy Innocents. The archbishop compared Herod to those in the present day who will do anything to keep God from interfering with their control of the world. It was interesting to compare Gomez’ homily with those Cardinal Mahoney gave at this mass over the last several years; Mahoney usually gave a talk about the state of the pro-life movement and the progress being made, complete with statistics. Gomez gave a genuine homily, making his points but drawing them from the scriptures read at the mass. In one way I was sorry for this; I wanted to get a sense of what Gomez is like as a person, and was hoping for something less formal. But on the other hand, a homily is supposed to be a homily, not an informal, off-the-cuff speech, and I’m glad that’s what we got.

In general, the mass went much as it had in past years; the music was the same, the Shantigarh Requiem for the Unborn, a piece written for this mass, and there were still liturgical “dancers”, sort of. I put “dancers” in quotes, because it’s almost certain to give the wrong impression. The dancers are young women in white dresses. They came in at the beginning of the procession with incense in these metal cones or funnels, as they have in past years; but they did so more quickly, and almost perfunctorily, than in the past, and there was also a server with a traditional censer that I don’t remember having seen in the past. (I might well be mistaken about that.) They brought in the altar cloths at the time of the offertory, and dressed the altar as they had done in the past. They led the procession of 150 candles at the end of the mass, and were responsible for placing the candles around the altar; but I’m not sure they processed out afterwards, and they certainly didn’t dance down the aisle as they had in the past.

What I’m trying to convey with all this is that even in past years, there was very little actual dancing being done; the “dancers” were mostly a fancy kind of altar server. More than that, any real dancing took place outside of the mass proper, which is to say that it wasn’t really liturgical dancing because it wasn’t part of the liturgy. And this year, even that was muted; apparently our new archbishop is already making his mark.

Mary and Eve

Posted on January 7, 2012 by wjduquette

Mary is often said to be the new Eve. The mother of all humanity, Eve chose the lesser over the greater, and sin and death came into the world. The Mother of God and of all Christians, Mary chose the greater over the lesser and life came into the world in the person of her son. Through one came damnation; through one came salvation. Why was there such a great difference? Both were filled with the grace of God; neither were subject to Original Sin. How is that one chose ill and the other chose well?

It occurred to me today that Eve’s sin was not sin as we experience it today. Thanks to Original Sin, our desires and appetites are disordered: we see the greater thing, but we desire, we hunger for, the lesser thing, and all too often we choose it, despite knowing full well that we shouldn’t. My wife’s Chocolate-Peanut butter-Butterscotch Rice Krispie treats are to die for–and that’s just what I’ll do if I keep eating them. I know better, but I want just another one, and all too often I eat it. And then another, and another….

But Eve was not subject to this kind of disordered appetite. Free from concupiscence, she was much better able than we are to choose what her reason told her was good. Unlike us, she had no desire to choose the lesser over the greater. So why did she fall?

And the answer is simple: she was misled. The serpent, father of lies, persuaded her that the lesser was the greater: that the fruit was both good for food, and would bring knowledge (both good things in and of themselves). It was with the full assent of her intellect, I imagine, that she chose to eat the fruit she had been commanded not to eat. The serpent had taught her, and now she knew “better”.

It was a lie; and in her innocence Eve had no experience of lies or of liars. It has been said that the knowledge of good and evil that the serpent promised was truly only the knowledge of evil, which is to say the knowledge of the serpent’s guile and its lies–and knowledge of her own failure. (Tradition records that Eve repented, and was not taken in again; the Eastern Orthodox churches revere her as a saint to this day.)

Eve was not stupid; she was not evil; but she was naive, and she believed a lie. Often, no doubt, we do the same. But not always–and hey, is that another Krispie Treat over there?

The Church tells us that Mary was born without Original Sin, that by the grace of Christ she was preserved from all stain of sin from the moment of her conception in her mother’s womb. Like Eve, then, her appetites were not at war with her intellect. Given that she knew the greater, she was not drawn by her desires to choose the lesser. And here we come to the big difference between Eve and Mary. Mary was young, and unstained; but she was not naive. Two-thousand years of Hebrew history came to a point in her. She knew the history of her forebears, and the consequences that came to Adam and Eve and to the tribes of Israel from choosing the lesser over the greater. She knew what sin was, not from inside, granted, but from outside. She knew what was due to God as her creator, and the natural consequences that came from spurning Him.

God put thousands of years of care into leading one branch of Adam and Eve’s descendants to the point where one human being, one young daughter of Eve, could be given the gift of holiness and would know enough to trust in Him and not squander it. All of human history comes down to that moment: when through Gabriel, God told Mary that she would bear a son; and choosing the greater part over the lesser part, she replied “Fiat voluntas tua: let it be done to me according to thy will.”

Our Lady, Mother of Virtue, pray for us.

Merry Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2011 by wjduquette

From the gospel reading this morning:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.

And this morning, about 2000 years ago, He came to live with us for ever and always.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

First Profession

Posted on May 7, 2011 by wjduquette

The process of becoming a lay member of the Order of Preachers—the Dominican Order, or Order of St. Dominic—is not short. First you spend a year as an inquirer, or postulant in the older terminology. During that time you are learning about the Order and the Dominican rule, and discerning whether you are in fact called to be a lay Dominican. In your second year, as a candidate, or novice, you try to live according to the rule, and you continue your discernment process. In the meantime, the chapter leadership are doing the same, discerning whether in their view you are called to join the order.

At the end of these two years, assuming that you still wish to and that the chapter council agrees, you are eligible to make your first profession—that is, to promise for the first time to live according to the Dominican rule. First profession is always for a particular period of time; and your period of temporary profession can last (with renewals) for three to seven years. At the end of that, you either leave the order or promise to live according to the rule for life.

This morning, I and four others in my chapter made our first professions as Lay Dominicans. Three others made their life professions; and one fellow was received and is consequently now a candidate, or novice. It was quite a morning.

May St. Dominic, St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Thomas Aquinas pray for us!

The Reapers are the Angels

Posted on February 12, 2011 by wjduquette

Julie’s been gushing over Alden Bell’s The Reapers are the Angels for quite some time now. She reviewed it, and then she kept mentioning it, and then she and Scott Daniels started up a new podcast just so that they could talk about it. I listened to the first half of the podcast, right up to the spoiler warning, and was curious enough to find a copy and read it so that I could listen to the second half.

One of the cover blurbs describes the book as “southern gothic: like Flannery O’Connor with zombies.” I can’t speak to that, as I’m not even sure what “southern gothic” is, and I’ve read very little Flannery O’Connor.

But what it is, is a zombie novel, set about twenty-five years after the zombie apocalypse. In Bell’s world, people who die and aren’t properly dispatched will come back as “meatskins”, barely sentient creatures with a taste for human flesh. Meatskins can be killed by destroying their brains; otherwise, they seem to last more or less for ever. Starvation doesn’t kill them, though it slows them down until they are almost inert. It’s clear that meatskins are no longer human, but only animals in human form.

Society has collapsed, naturally. There are little pockets of people here and there, scraping out a living from the remnants and huddling together in fortified buildings at night. And there are a few brave souls who travel about.

One of these is main character, a girl named Temple. She’s fifteen or sixteen, and hence has no memory of the days before the meatskins. She simply accepts them as part of the landscape. She feels uncomfortable with other people (for reasons I won’t go into) and likes to see the wonders that there are in the world; so she travels about. Along the way she kills a man who tries to rape her; the man’s brother feels compelled to avenge him, and the resulting pursuit forms most of the matter of the novel.

The most striking aspect of the novel, for me, is Temple’s approach to life in the world of the Zombies. They are dangerous, certainly, and not to be taken for granted; but they are just one of those things you have to deal with, like (in my world) paying the bills and taking out the trash, just part of the cost of living. In fact, she finds them much easier to deal with than the living, because they are so uncomplicated.

I liked the book; it’s surprisingly quite and peaceful considering the amount of death and destruction and violence it contains. I do have one complaint, from a science-fictional point of view. Early in the book, in an area with no living people other than herself, Temple gets some cheese crackers and soft drinks from an abandoned minimart, and finds a car by the side of the road that she’s able to hot-wire. One gathers that the bulk of the population became zombies in a very short time, leaving the world full of stores that are full of goods and the roads full of cars with tanks full of gasoline, and that the few remaining humans are still living on this stuff. OK, but twenty-five years later? I don’t buy it.

Still, The Reapers are the Angels isn’t really science-fiction; rather, it’s a reflection on what it means to be a person, on responsibility, on gratitude, and on justice versus mercy. Temple’s going to stick with me for a while, I think.

On Knowing Thyself

Posted on December 30, 2010 by wjduquette

From my quote journal:

And, of course, it is difficult, almost intolerable, for us to live with the awareness of ourselves as other than wholly good, successful, happy, strong, and so on. That is why we find it so hard to live with ourselves in truth. We should prefer to live with someone we could admire more wholeheartedly. So we try to present ourselves in some way that we can admire. And so we deceive ourselves.

— Simon Tugwell, The Beatitudes

On Having It All Together

Posted on December 29, 2010 by wjduquette