Sunday, May 9, 2021

Lex Anteinternet: May 9, 1921 (and May 9, 1921). Resistance, murder and secret victories.

Lex Anteinternet: May 9, 1921 (and May 9, 1921). Resistance, murde...

May 9, 1921 (and May 9, 1921). Resistance, murder and secret victories.


Fr. Józef Cebula

In Poland, by this point in the war, the Germans were engaged in full scale repression of the Catholic Church, having banned adherence to it, including the administration of the Sacraments.  Fr. Józef Cebula outright ignored the ban, as many other Polish priests did, and was arrested and incarcerated in a concentration camp as a result.  There he continued to minister to the sick.  On this day he was tortured and shot.  He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1999.

While certainly understood by historians, the level of repression meted out to the Poles during the war, by the occupying Germans, was at an almost unimaginable scale.  Unlike the occupied lands to the south and west of Germany, the Germans didn't recognize Polish sovereignty after the defeat of the Polish army and ran the territory in a fashion that was effectively genocidal.  Post war many Germans would make the claim that they were unaware of the Holocaust, a claim that is dubious at best given the scale upon which it was conducted, but when combined with German official killings within the Reich and the murderous occupation of Germany's neighbor Poland, what Nazi Germany stood for couldn't be ignored except by somebody wishing to ignore it.

Somebody not ignoring it was German Sophie Scholl, who at this point in her short life was in a nursing training program, having not yet entered the University of Munich.  On this day, Scholl turned 20 years old.

Scholl, of course, had only two years to live as she'd shortly enter the University there which would take her on to be one of the founding members of the White Rose movement.  The movement has been celebrated as one of the few (although there are others) German resistance movements that formed during the war. Scholl was a devout Lutheran but there's a connection to the item above in that the movement's origins were sparked by Hans Scholl, her brother, having changed the focus of his studies from medicine to philosophy and theology due to the influence of Catholic men of letters, Otl Aicher and Carl Muth, whom he encountered at the university.  This openly drew Hans Scholl towards Catholicism and it also caused him to be drawn towards Aicher and Muth's anti Nazi views, which were based on their religious convictions. Hans Scholl would be instrumental in forming the group. While the group was not all Catholic by any means, and included one member who was Russian Orthodox, the Catholic religious themes were prominent.  The group took its name from a sermon by Bishop Von Galen, which addressed the evils of euthanasia.

Aicher survived the war and in 1952 married Inge Scholl, a sister of Sophie and Hans.  He is remembered for designing the lead graphic designer for the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Also on this day the British took an Enigma from the U110.

The captured U110.

Today in World War II History—May 9, 1941

Enigma machine captured

This meant that in the space of just two days the British had taken an Enigma machine and the codes for July.  They knew exactly what they had and indeed had been targeting German naval assets for this purpose.

On the same day, as can be read about above, the Franco Thai War ended in the Thai's favor, in a peace brokered by Imperial Japan, or perhaps effectively forced by it.

This too oddly has a 1921 connection as on this day in 1921 Crown Prince Hirohito, who of course would go on to become the Emperor, set foot in the United Kingdom, the first member of the Imperial Japanese family to do so.  He was touring Europe.

Thursday, April 15, 2021

Lex Anteinternet: Subscribe by email "gadget" going away.

Lex Anteinternet: Subscribe by email "gadget" going away.: Google seems pretty intent on destroying the Blogger format, which means that for people like me, who have blogged on blogger, we have a cho...

Monday, April 5, 2021

Lex Anteinternet: Easter 2021. Next Year In Jerusalem.

Lex Anteinternet: Easter 2021. Next Year In Jerusalem.

Easter 2021. Next Year In Jerusalem.

This is Easter on the Latin Rite liturgical calendar for 2021, thereby being the date that almost everyone who observes it will observe it on.  Orthodox Easter this year is nearly a month away, on May 2.


It's a second sad Easter in a row.

For the second time we're facing an Easter in which the gloom of the Coronavirus Pandemic lingers overhead.  Perhaps, in that way, we're looking at an Easter that actually fits historical times, i.e., most of human history, more than our own times, and therefore should give us more to look forward to with the oncoming advance of Spring.

Still, it probably doesn't, and in no small part due to the really odd and unsettled times we're generally in.  

For those in the Diocese of  Cheyenne, such as myself, we still have a dispensation in place if we feel we should use it.  I've noted myself earlier in this blog that I wasn't really happy about Mass's being suspended in the first place, although I'd perhaps now reluctantly concede that it was necessary. As also earlier noted, when they opened back up I resumed going, but when infections started to climb and the vaccine was on the horizon, I dropped back out and made use of the dispensation.

Throughout this entire pandemic, my wife has really been the one who managed our approach to it, being diligent and careful and making me the same.  I take the pandemic very seriously and frankly I'm at the point where those who casually deny its anything anger me.  It truly is.  I've known, as we all do by now, a host of people who have had it and a couple of them are dead.  People who give the flippant "it's no worth than the flu" don't seem to realize that the flu isn't a cold either and that its a real killer.  The reason we tolerate the flu like we do is that we have no choice.  Here we do, but we're rapidly losing out on that choice in part because people who want to believe that it amounts to nothing or wild theories about its original or the vaccine are being slow to get vaccinated.  And in our modern society, in which we've elevated the individual and his rights and beliefs to a near religion we aren't willing to use any form of compulsion in order to make sure the appropriate number of vaccinations are accomplished.

That day may never have been possible in any event. We may have lost out on that opportunity from the very first instance, in which case SARS-CoV-2 will be an endemic disease and go on killing.  

At least one person I know who takes the disease very seriously, but who is younger and therefore able to bear more risks, has just become numb to it.  That is, it's real, they got vaccinated, but they're otherwise too fatigued to observe much in the way of any other precaution.  As noted, some people never took any as they refused to believe it was real.  Others, and I find this approach the oddest, accepted it was real and took some precautions, unless they were personally inconvenient.  

The level of precautions a person took and wear tends to reflect a person's beliefs. The Catholic Church in Wyoming obviously took it very seriously in shutting things down, but I frankly think the Church really dropped the ball in regard to outreach to parishioners.  Even on my end, as a former lector and a former council member, I received very little contact during the pandemic from my diocese.  If I've received this litter, and have been a faithful and loyal Catholic my entire life, I have to think that marginal Catholics are in no better position than I am.  One thing the Church is really going to have to answer for, and I mean in this realm and the next, is the complete and utter failure, it seems to me, to try to reach out during the pandemic.  A parish priest is actually responsible for all of the souls in his diocese.  If the Catholic souls aren't getting any contact. . . well. . . there's going to be questions that will have to be answered.

Anyhow, at Mass I noticed that almost everyone was very observant about wearing masks, which were required, although there's always the few who will pull them down below their nose at which point they're pointless.  Sometimes that's ignorance and in others its a form of protest.  Be that as it may, they were there.

I'm told, but don't know, that in some Protestant churches following the COVID guidelines were simply suspended completely.

In a civil context, in some places I've been too that's very much the case.  One local sporting goods store had signs about wearing masks but few on the staff did. A few men who work in the store do and have, but the huge army of 20 something girls that loiters near the cash registers grossly overmanning them never did.  Sporting goods stores here are almost a center of civil protest/COVID denial.

Circling back around, during the pandemic my wife has lead the charge and we've both been very good about doing what we should. We haven't been to a restaurant in a year, with one noon meal that was a work invitation, and two for out of town depositions, being the exception.  I've been invited to "go get a beer" after work, but I declined, something made easy by the fact I decline that invitation usually anyway.  

Anyhow, I've now had both of my COVID 19 vaccinations.  My wife has had her first.  My kids have both had theirs.  Only my son and my wife are in the window of non protection, as they're either waiting for their second shot or have just had theirs.

I was going to resume Mass attendance last week, but my daughter pointed out that my wife had been so good about her observation of the rules and just had her shot, so we should probably abstain.  She didn't come home for Easter due to school and work and will make Mass where she is.  Here we debated it last night and ultimately decided, for the same reason, to wait one more week.

Locally it turns out that of the three parishes two were requiring reservations, but once again due to the phenomenally bad outreach the Church's have, that wasn't apparent at the one we were going to go to until this morning when I happened to find that was on their video feed.  For goodness sakes, is there any excuse for not getting this out in some other fashion?  So we likely would have been turned away.  That would have lead us to the parish across town which is not requiring reservations, but which was anticipating putting overflow in the poorly ventilated basement so that those there could watch it on television.

Next year, for those of us still in the temporal realm, Mass in the normal fashion will have resumed as life in the normal fashion will have had to.  The country can't keep being shut down forever and the entire population, save for those who really have the resources to do nothing at all, has to get moving again and patience has worn thing.  My guess is that we will not reach the "herd immunity" threshold as there will be those who steadfastly refuse to believe that the disease is serious or who will continue to believe myths about vaccines which are allowed to circulate in the post Cold War scientific age.  Those who are vaccinated will get yearly boosters which will be more or less effective. Some will get sick and some of them will die and for some people that will come as a surprise.  But life will return to normal, with normal in this instance begin an unfortunate blend of the 1970s inflationary era, brought on by profligate government spending, and 2010/20s moral sinkage.

On that latter item, there were those who hoped that the pandemic might refocus society and cause some reflection on where we were going and what we were doing.  Perhaps some of that did occur, but there does not seem to be much evidence of it now. And to the extent it did, a lot of that was swept away by political forces that refused to acknowledge defeat and countervailing ones that accordingly came into power seeking to bring in every "progressive" item on that laundry list that's been thought of since the late 1890s.  Things are really not looking that good, and in a lot of ways.

But next year, at least there will be Mass.

Jews traditionally end the Passover Sedar with "Next Year in Jerusalem", signaling an obvious deep religious hope.

Next year in Jerusalem. [1].

__________________________________________________________________________________

Footnotes:

1.  I don't think this is incapable of being misunderstood, but just in case, and because I'm occasionally asked, this is meant symbolically here.  I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in visiting Jerusalem.  I.e., none.  This isn't mean to be rude, but I know it baffles people, and as I have a friend whose been once and who is planning to return again, I know I'll be asked that along these lines; "I'm going on the church trip to Jerusalem. .  . wouldn't you like to go?" followed by all the things that a person could see in Jerusalem.

That's great for people who want to see it, but I don't.  I don't have any interest in going anywhere in the Holy Land, which may be odd for a Christian, but I don't.  None.  Indeed, if I were to go to anywhere in the Middle East the locations would be limited to certain big desert areas as I like big deserts.  I'm not keen on cities in general, and particularly not large crowded ones.

FWIW, I often give the same reaction to other venues that feature lots of people.  "Wouldn't you like to go to China?".  No, I would not.  "London?".  M'eh.

Monday, February 1, 2021

Lex Anteinternet: Cliff notes of the Zeitgeist Part I. Observations on current events, political, economic, religious, and otherwise.

Starting the year off with some grousing, I suppose, in the form of a blog mirror post from one of our companion blogs:
Lex Anteinternet: Cliff notes of the Zeitgeist Part I. Some Observa...: 1.  Populism and racism aren't the same thing, even if some populist are racist. Theodore Roosevelt.  He was a populist, and a progressi...

The entry it self is fairly long.  I'm only linking in the ones that are relevant here. 

Cliff notes of the Zeitgeist Part I. Some Observations on current events, political, economic, religious, and otherwise.


5.  Apparently "innocent until proven guilty" is something that nobody really believes. . . or at least it doesn't apply to Catholic clerics.

I haven't commented on this before and perhaps I shouldn't here, but I'm going to anyhow.

The Tribune has been following, understandably, the legal woes of retired Wyoming Bishop Joseph Hart now for years.  Bishop Hart was accused of sexual ickyness with male minors.

During the same period of time during which Hart has been dealing with this, three local Protestant ministers have faced the same accusations, and they all proved true. Mention of it in the Press was very brief.  No following story occurred.  Hart's story has, however, proven different.

The initial investigation lead the Laramie County authorities to pass on doing anything. They didn't see enough evidence.  The current Bishop, however, Bishop Biegler, chose to revive the matter within the church itself and that lead to it being looked at by the authorities a second time.  On that second occasion, the prosecutor in Natrona County again determined not to charge Bishop Hart with anything.  That lead to criticism, he reopened the file and, after some time had passed, he once again determined not to file charges.

The internal church matter, however, went on to some sort of tribunal at the Vatican. And now it also has determined that there's not enough there to do anything.  

With this being the case, Bishop Hart, over a period of decades, has endured and prevailed over four separate prosecutorial episodes, three at the state level, and one at hte Vatican level.

The American myth is that you are innocent until proven guilty.  Hart hasn't been proven guilty of anything. The Tribune, however, continues to treat his as if he is guilty adn getting away with it.  Indeed, Bishop Biegler isn't helping much either as, having gotten this rolling, he's still basically sending out signals that he believes that Hart is guilty and will be crediting his accusers in spite of yaers and years of such efforts having failed.  This gets to something regarding Bishop Biegler we'll deal with in a moment, but we'll note this here.

Bishop Hart gets this sort of attention as he's Catholic.  The Catholic Church has gone through a horrific episode recently, now mostly addressed, with clerics who are now all older having committed terrible sexual transgressions.  Most of these, however, seem to have arisen due to a vareity of factors that let in priests who were not there for the right reasons, although their views are ones that the press also genuinely celebrates.  Indeed, this takes us back to the culture wars item above, as Catholic clerics that are loyal to the Church's traditional beliefs and dogma are ones that the press really doesn't like.

And for that reason, it doesn't like the church itself, which is why this gets so much press but real proven accusations by protestant minister is the same readership field, do not.

6.  Bishop Biegler and the rearward gaze.

We're now a full year into a present massive crisis that has caused a crisis in the Church but to look at the Diocese of Cheyenne, you'd not know it.

The Bishop has suspended the obligation to attend Mass on what is now running up on a year.  I had real doubts about this early on, but as the pandemic deepened, I have to admit that at some point, that's valid.  As soon as the churches were opened back up, I started going back to Mass, but in the recent deepened episode, I suspended going, taking advantage of the dispensation as I had a childhood asthma condition and I really don't want to get virus, particularly with vaccinations come on so soon.

Anyhow, if you check in on the Diocese website the first thing you are going to find is a statement by Bishop Biegler about retried Bishop Hart.

Bishop Hart was the bishop here from 1978 until 2001.  I.e., he hasn't been the bishop for 20 years.  He's been retired for 20 years.  We're on our third bishop since that time.

Wyoming, as we've noted above, is a highly transient state.  There's a core of us diehards who were born here, and who will die here, and who are watching people come and go in the meantime.  And quite a few of us, although its a minority in the state's population, are Catholic.  Quite a few of the transients are too. 

Most of the people in the pews have very low interest, in this point, in the Joseph Hart saga.  It doesn't impact our daily lives whatsoever.  When Hart was last Bishop, I was 37 years old and my youngest child was a baby.  

The pandemic does impact my daily life.

During the entire pandemic, I haven't had a representative of the parish reach out even once.  I've reached in several times, but at the time the pandemic struck I'd only recently gone off of a parish council.

Indeed, the pandemic struck at a particularly bad time, in this context, for me, as I'd gone off of the council and I stepped down as a lector as the Mass time didn't work well for my spouse and both kids were headed off to Laramie.  I'd been a lector at that point for years and years, and I do miss it. But as that occurred it was also the case that the downtown parish was clearly being changed into the Hispanic parish. That's fine, but Mass times were also altered for reasons that aren't clear to me, and therefore I went across town to another parish. The entire process left me feeling a bit unmoored as the parish that I'd served at quickly became pretty unrecognizable, the new Priest had no idea who I was, the focus was on a demographic that needs to be focused on but which I'm not part of, and then the pandemic hit.

The parish I was going to did a good job at first at dealing with the crisis but then the Bishop ordered the doors closed.  I'm sure I'm just lost to where I was at, and now I'm barely known where I am.  I get that.

What I don't get, quite frankly, is why there wasn't a full scale effort to require the parishes to reach out to parishioners.  There wasn't.  Or at least there wasn't one that I could see.  And to check in on the Diocese website to learn the latest in regard to the church and the pandemic is a disappointment, as the information is hard to find.  News on Bishop Biegler and Bishop Hart is easy to find, however.

And here's the point.  In a pandemic in which our connections with our parish is now strained and souls stand to be lost, dealing with a problem that's now 20 years in our review mirror should not be front and center.

Friday, December 25, 2020

Lex Anteinternet: Merry Christmas! Καλά Χριστούγεννα, Frohe Weihnac...

Lex Anteinternet: Merry Christmas! Καλά Χριστούγεννα, Frohe Weihnac...:   

Merry Christmas! Καλά Χριστούγεννα, Frohe Weihnachten!, Поздравляю со cветлым праздником Рождества!, Häid jõule, Mutlu Noeller, Priecīgus Ziemassvētkus, क्रिसमस की बधाई, Linksmų Kalėdų, Bella da Nadel!, کریسمس مبارک, สุขสันต์วันคริสต์มาส, Ya Krismasi, Felix dies Nativitatis, Nollaig Shona Daoibh!, Vrolijk kerstfeest!, Noflike krystdagen! Nollaig Chridheil, Krismasi njema, Natale! Joyeux Noël !, Gleðileg jól, ¡Feliz Navidad!, Feliz Natal!,God jul!. めりーくりすます, 행복한 크리스마스 되십시오, Chúc Giáng Sinh Vui Vẻ!, 圣诞节快乐, Maging maligaya sana ang iyong pasko, Hyvää Joulua! щасливого Різдва, Wesołych Świąt, Eguberri on, Eedookh Breekha, عيد ميلاد سعيد, חג מולד שמח, Craciun Fericit, Boldog Karácsonyt!, Cestit Bozic!

 

Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock.  The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear.

The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest fand on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”

So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds.

And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.

Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.


Καὶ ποιμένες ἦσαν ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ τῇ αὐτῇ ἀγραυλοῦντες καὶ φυλάσσοντες φυλακὰς τῆς νυκτὸς ἐπὶ τὴν ποίμνην αὐτῶν. Καὶ ἄγγελος κυρίου ἐπέστη αὐτοῖς, καὶ δόξα κυρίου περιέλαμψεν αὐτούς• καὶ ἐφοβήθησαν φόβον μέγαν. Καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ὁ ἄγγελος, Μὴ φοβεῖσθε• ἰδοὺ γάρ, εὐαγγελίζομαι ὑμῖν χαρὰν μεγάλην, ἥτις ἔσται παντὶ τῷ λαῷὅτι ἐτέχθη ὑμῖν σήμερον σωτήρ, ὅς ἐστιν χριστὸς κύριος, ἐν πόλει Δαυίδ. Καὶ τοῦτο ὑμῖν τὸ σημεῖον• εὑρήσετε βρέφος ἐσπαργανωμένον, καὶ κείμενον ἐν φάτνῃ. Καὶ ἐξαίφνης ἐγένετο σὺν τῷ ἀγγέλῳ πλῆθος στρατιᾶς οὐρανίου, αἰνούντων τὸν θεόν, καὶ λεγόντων, Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῷ, καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη• ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκία. Καὶ ἐγένετο, ὡς ἀπῆλθον ἀπ' αὐτῶν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν οἱ ἄγγελοι, οἱ ποιμένες ἐλάλουν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, Διέλθωμεν δὴ ἕως Βηθλέεμ, καὶ ἴδωμεν τὸ ῥῆμα τοῦτο τὸ γεγονός, ὃ ὁ κύριος ἐγνώρισεν ἡμῖν. Καὶ ἦλθαν σπεύσαντες, καὶ ἀνεῦραν τήν τε Μαριὰμ καὶ τὸν Ἰωσήφ, καὶ τὸ βρέφος κείμενον ἐν τῇ φάτνῃἸδόντες δὲ διεγνώρισαν περὶ τοῦ ῥήματος τοῦ λαληθέντος αὐτοῖς περὶ τοῦ παιδίου τούτου. Καὶ πάντες οἱ ἀκούσαντες ἐθαύμασαν περὶ τῶν λαληθέντων ὑπὸ τῶν ποιμένων πρὸς αὐτούς. Ἡ δὲ Μαριὰμ πάντα συνετήρει τὰ ῥήματα ταῦτα, συμβάλλουσα ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτῆς. Καὶ ὑπέστρεψαν οἱ ποιμένες, δοξάζοντες καὶ αἰνοῦντες τὸν θεὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσιν οἷς ἤκουσαν καὶ εἶδον, καθὼς ἐλαλήθη πρὸς αὐτούς. 














Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Churches of the West: On the morality of the Coronavirus Vaccines.

In what should put this matter to rest, the Vatican indicated that the vaccines are not morally objectionable.
Churches of the West: On the morality of the Coronavirus Vaccines.: This is something that you have to be pretty attuned, I think, to the Catholic world to pick up on, and to appreciate.  There's been som...

For most rank and file orthodox Catholics this will in fact be the end of this debate, but my prediction is that for some it will not for some Rad Trads who have headed off in the Dr. Taylor Marshall/Patrick Coffin direction.  

 

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

On the morality of the Coronavirus Vaccines.

This is something that you have to be pretty attuned, I think, to the Catholic world to pick up on, and to appreciate.  There's been some questioning in Catholic circles on whether its morally permissible to take the Coronavirus vaccines.

Before I get any further, let me state that at least in the Diocese of Cheyenne, where I live, it is.  Our Bishop has so declared.

Okay, how does this all come up?

Well, not the way that you might suppose, at least if you are an American. There isn't a raging debate in the Catholic World about the efficacy of vaccinations.  While that debate might exist in American society at large, where there's an anti Science tradition that's very long in standing, and which has been reamplified in recent years due to a decrease in science funding in education which was sufficiently pronounced such the standards of education could fall so low that a twit like Jenny McCarthy, who is only qualified as a big boob model, is actually taken seriously on a scientific matter (who would listen to McCarthy on anything is beyond me).  No, this topic comes up due to a long standing Catholic moral principle holding that life can only be taken by a person in self defense.

Catholics are extremely serious about this.  Much more so than other non pacifist. Catholics aren't overall pacifists, but the Church's view on when life can be taken is quite strict.  It's often highly misunderstood, in part because the majority of Christians in the world are Catholic and lots of people in every religion will fail to follow the tenants of their faith.*  And its also a standard that has evolved a bit as society and technology has evolved, while the wider facet of that being ignored has also tended to be ignored in some quarters.  Perhaps the most dramatic examples of that might be the bombing campaigns of World War Two, a war for which the Allied cause is often cited as being about as close to a "just war" as a war can be.  Be that as it may, it's nearly impossible to reconcile some of the Allied bombing efforts of the Second World War with justly fighting a war, and the use of the Atomic Bombs at the wars end almost certainly cannot be.  Be that as it may, there were plenty of Catholic aircrewmen on bombers during the war.

And what isn't at issue is a religion based disagreement with science.  Indeed, in spite of the intrusion of Protestant beliefs into the pews of Catholic Americans to some extent, the Catholic Church as a whole is hugely supportive of and a supporter of science.  Indeed, ironically, at least one of the common scientific beliefs that some fundamentalist Protestants really have trouble with is one that a Catholic cleric came up with, that being the Big Bang Theory.  Catholics generally love science.

So what's the problem here?

Well stem cells.

If you read the entry above you'll see that at least one of the vaccines was developed using stem cells at some point, but at the same time neither of the current ones used stem cells from a directly aborted baby.  Given this, the Bishop of Cheyenne has given them a pass.

But the fact that this letter was issued also means that somebody had a question about it and it had to be addressed.

This isn't a majority of Catholic Bishops, we'd note.  Whatever happened (the Jesuit magazine America claims it was due to misinformation regarding the vaccines) at least two American Bishops issued statements that condemned at least one of the vaccines. This lead to a corrective memo being issued by the United States Conference for Catholic Bishops which addressed that issue, which reads much the letter that is set out above. The vaccines are okay.  The memo also apparently cited to a pro life organization that termed the vaccines as ethically uncontroversial.

The British Catholic Bishops went further and urged their flock to get the vaccines, noting that getting them was "not a sin".

In contrast, Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan declared the vaccines morally impermissible.  And this is what makes this sort of peculiarly interesting.  

Bishop Schneider is a traditionalist and is well known in traditionalist circles.  He's an opponent of much of what was derived from Vatican II and is very outspoken.

Now, Catholics in the Diocese of Cheyenne are not obligated to follow the pronouncements of Bishop Schneider that are contrary to those of Bishop Biegler.  The Bishop in your diocese, in the Catholic order of things, is the one that you need to pay attention to on certain things and can rely upon in others.  Catholics owe their diocesan Bishop a degree of loyalty.  If you are in a diocese in which the Bishop has said its morally impermissible to receive the vaccine, you can't simply just ignore that.

But in the current Internet Fueled Age considering the views of our local Bishop has become less common in areas in which people want to pick and choose their beliefs.  Trad or Rad Trad Catholics latch on to statements like those from Bishop Schneider that fit their views and will reject them over their own Bishop.

Indeed, this has the odd impact of distorting the Catholic order pretty significantly.  Even well into the mid 20th Century Catholics were much more in tune with what their own Bishops had to say than what the Pope might be doing.  The Pope was far away and the Bishop was fairly near.  This reflected the order of the Church.  On day to day matters in the Catholic world, the Bishop was likely to be the one that Catholics heard from.

But now many Catholics tend to follow the Pope almost as if he was present in the local parish.  In reality, what the parish Priest is doing tends to be immediately important to Catholics real lives more than what the Pope may be doing, on a daily basis. But if you read Catholic commentary now, particularly that of Trads and Rad Trads, you'd get the other view.

And not completely without reason. This Pope has been upsetting to orthodox Catholics.  But that in turn as fueled a sort of hyper orthodoxy that predated Pope Francis.

I'm expecting that to develop here.

As for what I'm doing, vaccination wise, I'm receiving it as soon as I conceivably can, and I'm an orthodox Catholic.

And I think there may be another moral issue afloat here.  In this day and age there's a massive amount of scientific bogosity that's circulating in society and many Americans, at least, have come down to believing things that are absolutely false.  Indeed, on this issue, the irony is that there will be some Trads that will abstain from receiving the vaccine due to having views that are supported by pronouncement of Bishops like Bishop Schneider, who have a bit of a fan following, while other rank and file Protestant and non religious Americans will abstain as they've bought off on the blatherings of anti vaxer boob model Jenny McCarthy and her fellow travelers.

We'll deal with the strange era of anti scientific thought elsewhere on one of our companion blogs, but on an issue like this, for sincere Catholics, the issue thus becomes this.  If it takes 70% of the population to become immune from a virus to achieve "herd immunity", and if we now that the virus kills, if we refuse to participate in achieving herd immunity, are we morally complicit to some degree in unnecessary deaths?

*One of my favorite examples was one of Cromwell's lieutenants who fought to prosecute the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church but who asked for, and received, permission for his mistress to be in prison with him rather than his wife.  Granted, Crowwell's people were generally very serious Calvinist who believed in double predestination, something most who claim to be Calvinist today do not, but that's really taking that a bit far.

Sunday, December 13, 2020

On the ongoing dispensation for Mass attendance

The Bishop of Cheyenne has continued his disposition to attend Mass due to the Coronavirus Pandemic.  His decree on the same is here:


First of all, I'm going to be blunt.  The Diocese of Cheyenne has done a remarkably bad job during the Coronavirus Pandemic in getting the news out on anything.  

Bad.

The Diocese seems to be of the view that Catholics in this state all check the web all the time, will log into parish websites, or maybe are in some sort of day to day communication with the parish.


They aren't.

Some are, and I can vouch for that as I was once on a Parish Council. There's a group of dedicated parishioners who are in constant contact with the Priest and their parishes, but there are a lot who very much are not.

Indeed, one of the real ironies in all of this is that Bishop Steven Biegler, who has only been in that position for a couple of years, has a fairly apparent interests in trying to reach Hispanic Catholics, who very much need to be reached.  But to understand why we have so many Hispanic Catholics here, you also have to understand that we have a high transient population, much of which is based in the oilfield.  I defended the depositions of two Mexican oilfield workers just a couple of weeks ago, and this is common.  My guess is that the Hispanic population itself here has dramatically reduced in numbers over the past year, due to the oilfield depression, but be that as it may, I am extremely doubtful that Hispanic parishioners are going to be reached by their logging into the website of the Diocese or their Parish.

To add to that, neither are a lot of average parishioners.  I haven't been contacted even once during the pandemic and I was a Parish Council member up until just before it hit, which also was just before the last Priest rotation.  My guess is that I'm probably not on the active Parish roles anymore even though its my home Parish, as I started attending an across town Parish (I'm equidistant from all the Parishes in town) when the Mass schedule was changed as part of an evident effort to make it more convenient for Hispanic parishioners.  I'm not complaining about that change, as its clear to me that they need to be reached, but when I switched where I normally go, I also started making my donations there, as I was there.   As other family members also attend there, and as its a parish that I've attended at various points in the past (as I noted its just as close as my home parish, in terms of time of travel), they recognized me pretty quickly.

I suppose my overall point is is that I have had for a long time a vague feeling that Bishops don't always understand their Diocese very well.  Our current Bishop is from South Dakota, a neighboring state, and that cuts against my argument.  The prior one was from Wisconsin and a farmer by background, and a hunter, so he did have a grasp of the nature of where he was and seemed to appreciate that (he's now in Alaska).  But cutting against that, it seems to me, are the seeming assumptions that everyone knows what is going on and everyone is checking in.  Those sorts of parishes sound more like the ones the Priests on Catholic Stuff You Should Know discuss in Denver, rather than here, but maybe that's just me.

Even if it is just me, somebody should be reaching out.  That isn't happening locally.

And as evidence of that, I only learned about the continued dispensation as the old one was running out, I think, on December 15, and I logged on a couple of weeks ago to see if my recollection was correct.  To my surprise, it had been continued.

You'd have thought that there would have been an effort to reach out to people about this.  

If there was, it didn't reach me.

So hence my complaint.

I'll further note that I was not happy with the churches closing in the first place.  I'll admit now that my view was wrong.  I was also very much unhappy with the suspension of all sacraments, which has been lifted.  I don't think completely suspending Confession the way that itw as done was the right thing to do and I don't think it should have been done.  I was nearly as glad to see the ban on Confessions lifted as I was to see Masses restored, as odd as that may seem.

When Masses were restored I started going again, but as the pandemic heated back up, I dropped back out the last few weeks. Hence the reason for my checking.

During this crisis I've learned that I miss Mass for sure and as a lifelong Catholic I've come to admire, as odd as that may seem, dedicated Protestants and Orthodox who go every Sunday not because of a church law but because they choose too. And when things opened back up, and I could go, I chose to.  My suspension the last couple of weeks is because I'm one of those folks who have "conditions".

I'm in good health, but I had asthma pretty severely as a kid and it resumed after I went to law school for a period of time. When I was a kid I had to take shots weekly, or maybe it was biweekly, for what seemed like years, although the way such recollections work probably means it was not as great of period of time as I recall.  The shots made things less worse, but not better.  Fall was always a period of agony for me until I went to university the first time, and then they oddly left for the most par.  I was aware that allergies could come and go, but I didn't expect it to occur to me.*  I was very glad they had.

And then they returned when I was in law school.  Pretty severely, in fact, and to some plant pollens I'd never been allergic to before.  That caused me to have to resort to shots once again.

That helped clear things up for years, and indeed the allergies mostly seemed to go away.  Here a couple of years ago we got a dog for the first time in our long marriage, and it was a breed advertised as hypoallergenic.  It really seems to be.  Before that, we obtained a cat as well, which we had for years.  He simply moved in.

Having the cat caused me to believe that my animal allergies, which were widespread, had likely vanished.  Cats are one of the things that I knew for certain that I was allergic to.  Prior to getting the dog I went in to be tested and, nope, all the things I'd ever been allergic to, I still am.

Why aren't I reacting to them?

I have no idea.

I do know that in the fall in a bad year I'll get sick.  I generally recognize what it is, but frankly it's very difficult to determine at the onset if its a cold, severe cold, allergies, or severe allergies.  Long experience lets me generally guess right.  Usually I only have to worry about this in the fall, as noted, and some falls, like this past one, not at all.  Usually during the winter I'll experience some mild allergy symptoms all year long, which I think is due to working in a building that's over 100 years old. There's something in it, and when its really locked up and airtight, that gets to me.  I can tell that's not a cold.

One of the things about having had a fairly pronounced asthma condition is that if you've had it, and probably early on before you knew you had it, you may very well have experienced nearly dying.  Some asthmatics experience that repeatedly.  I have.  The experience is something nearly unique to asthmatics and its something that psychologist state that they rarely will describe to anyone.  There's good reason for that, one being that its nearly indescribable.  

The best actual description I've ever seen is set out in the book Mornings On Horseback, which is about Theodore Roosevelt's youth.  TR was a severe asthmatic as a kid.  The description is right on.  What is hard to relate about it is that when a severe attack sets in you reach a point where you know that you are in real trouble and you are headed for death.  It's pretty obvious.  When you pull back out and recover you are exhausted, but also, oddly, euphoric, as you've cheated death.  Those who have been asthmatics for a period of time, if they're conditions is serious, have experienced that again and again.

You also really learn to avoid what is trying to kill you like nothing else.

Which brings me back around to this.  

Nobody ever recovers from an injury or affliction, really.  If you've had some sort of severe condition, its' done its damage.  Asthmatics that were well treated as kids usually have overcome it in part because they've been forced to develop their bodies.  It's an oddity for sure, but at 57 years old I'm in a lot better shape than most 57 years old, a byproduct in part of the way our family has always lived but also in part due to my parents making sure I was active when I was young, mostly in swimming which is a good sport for asthmatics.  But nonetheless, if you get a severe cold or flu, you remember the condition of your youth.  When the wheezes stats to set in you recall what it was like and that death was always right around the corner.  "Feeling poorly?" comes the question.  "Having a hard time breathing" comes the answer.  But in reality, you're laying on the sofa and death is in the chair across the room, you know it.

Most asthmatics also tend to become fairly fatalistic. There are those who claim that people can't imagine their own deaths and don't ever really accept that it will occur.  I think that's baloney, and in reality what that might mean is pampered modern Americans can't imagine it and always imagine that in their 80s they'll really be in their 30s, but people who have had asthma can.  Death has come and saddled you up on his horse plenty of times, and then simply dropped you back off.  You know that one day he's coming again and won't let ago.

Generally we don't hope that's earlier than it needs to be, and hence why I've sat out the past few weeks.**

I frankly feel horrible about it and I don't think I personally do well without going to Mass and experiencing Christ in the Mass.  I don't do well with alternatives. I'm hoping this is all over very soon.

I guess I understand the continuation of the dispensation, although at this point it frankly isn't worded very clearly.  It seems we have a dispensation, and I think that my concerns qualify me for it, but it almost seems to be a qualified dispensation.

But at this point, somebody really needs to reach out.  

*Indeed one of the features of having severe allergies is not only this mystery, but the common misunderstandings about it.  I retain allergies, but I've endured a lecture from a person at one time who insisted that all childhood allergies vanish, something you can't tell somebody for whom they have not vanished.

**Which brings me to hypocrisy.  I've gone in to work the entire time, which seems hypocritical, but I've also tried to avoid contact as much as possible with as many people as possible.

Sunday, November 29, 2020

Lex Anteinternet: Pope Francis in the New York Times and the Fatigue...

Lex Anteinternet: Pope Francis in the New York Times and the Fatigue...

Pope Francis in the New York Times and the Fatigued Audience.

In the past here, up until this past year, when a Pope made a major statement I usually commented on it.  I've pretty much given up doing that with Pope Francis.  Indeed, I've come to the point where I dread his new proclamations as all too often they're followed by clarifications and explanations, and the like, and generate confusion.

Indeed, I find the Catholic Answers responses to this interesting.  I tend to find that the apologist who comments there that I like the most, Jimmy Akin, simply doesn't comment on them as they come up in general, an overall wise approach in my view.  Others take to trying to explain them which can be difficult not because they aren't explainable, but because the Holy Father simply isn't a good writer, at least in so far as the English translations of his works would have it, and he tends to speak without really internally vetting what he's saying.  Tim Staples, whom I normally don't listen to, was simply gushing in his praise of the Pope's most recent encyclical declaring it absolutely brilliant, for example, which probably was really only persuasive to those who were already convinced, and pretty much turned off by those who were.

The entire recent "Pope approves of civil unions" matter was such an example.  Put in context the Pope was in fact not declaring that the Church now approves of civil unions nor was it modifying its positions on marriage in general. But his remarks frankly were hard to explain and caused at least one really orthodox but not rad trad apologist, Matt Fradd, to react with despair.  Indeed, the Pope allowing his comments to end up in a public medium being misconstrued yet again, even if they predate his Papacy (which they seem to have) was pretty much the tipping point for a lot of orthodox Catholics who are not rad trads.  If he couldn't have prevented his comments from being used, which he very well might not have been able to do, and if they predated his Papacy, there should have been some quicker response than there ultimately was so that there wasn't a widespread press declaration confusing the rank and file in the pews and causing figures like Fr. James Martin to declare them to be "first steps", which they were not.  I.e., I think orthodox Catholics have sort of turned Pope Francis off, and "liberal" or "progressive" Catholics are an aging declining demographic whose views, frankly, really don't matter.  The support, therefore, by Fr. James Martin, SJ, really matters only to the Press, not so much the people in the pews.

Compounding this, while the Pope isn't a good writer, he's a proficient one, and its gotten so a person can hardly turn around without a new Papal writing appearing.  Just in the last couple of months he issued a new encyclical that was an extremely lengthy text which appeared to a be a summation of all of his prior encyclicals.  Indeed, this was so much the case I wondered if it was some sort of final compilation prior to a resignation.  It doesn't appear to be, but its hard to figure out why he issued an encyclical which is a lengthy summation of his prior encyclicals.

That wasn't his only writing, however, this year.  Just a few weeks ago the Pope issued Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, which I have not read and which I'm very unlikely to.  This book was apparently written during a Coronavirus lockdown and comments on a lot of contemporary social matters, including protests in the United States.  And now, over the past few days, he has an op ed in The New York Times.

I'll note here that I don't expect the Pope to really be familiar with the Times, and I'll give the Times credit for running it.  The Times does have one highly orthodox Catholic columnist on its staff who writers very Catholic themed articles.  Having said that, the Times isn't what it once was, so to a degree choosing the Times is an interesting choice by whomever made it.

Additionally, the Times has a "pay wall" and that means people who regularly read it will probably not be able to unless they're a subscriber, which there's no point in being.  Be that as it may, I did read it.

I was frankly prepared to dislike it as I'm frankly very tired of the Pope saying things that have to be explained as they creep up on falling outside of orthodoxy.  I'm like Matt Fradd and a lot of other loyal orthodox Catholics that way in which there's been so much, I'm just tired of it and probably have the volume on pretty low at this point.  A lot of us, rightly or wrongly, are at this point just marking time until the Boomer generation ages out of high Church offices and a new age of orthodoxy resumes, which it will.  It's not that we're not respectful or loyal to the Pope, but we're probably resuming the mental attitude of Catholics of the 18th Century or 19th Century who didn't really expect to hear from the Pope much and are accordingly sort of tuning out now.  Or maybe more accurately we may have the view of Eastern Rite Catholics who are fully Catholic in every sense but are more insular and traditional in ways that don't allow the outside world to impact them to the same degree.  Indeed, quite a few orthodox Catholics were headed in that direction anyhow. 

Well, at any rate, the Pope has published in the Times with an op ed entitled:

A Crisis Reveals What Is in Our Hearts

To come out of this pandemic better than we went in, we must let ourselves be touched by others’ pain.

We should note that headline writers, and not the authors, write headlines for papers like the times.  If that seems sort of an un Francis like headline and subheading, it probably is.  It was no doubt written by the Times.

Anyhow, I read the entire op ed and didn't find anything unorthodox or shocking, although it may be signaling an intended effort, which I'll address below. So as is frequently the case, I was a bit pleasantly surprised.  So far on Francis' encyclicals, I've found them that way.  I also find their views often uniquely foreign in a way, but then he isn't an American, after all.

A lot of the Pope's article is personal about the events leading up to his lung removal many years ago, and the experience of pain and illness.  A lot of it is, in fact, deeply personal and an homage to two sisters who were nurses when he was ill, noting as he ties it back in:

Whether or not they were conscious of it, their choice testified to a belief: that it is better to live a shorter life serving others than a longer one resisting that call. That’s why, in many countries, people stood at their windows or on their doorsteps to applaud them in gratitude and awe. They are the saints next door, who have awakened something important in our hearts, making credible once more what we desire to instill by our preaching.

My conservative friends, I'm afraid, aren't going to like it. There's pretty clearly a swipe at Americans, and perhaps the Trump Administration, and a common view in the United States, where he states:

With some exceptions, governments have made great efforts to put the well-being of their people first, acting decisively to protect health and to save lives. The exceptions have been some governments that shrugged off the painful evidence of mounting deaths, with inevitable, grievous consequences. But most governments acted responsibly, imposing strict measures to contain the outbreak.

Yet some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom! Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate.

It is all too easy for some to take an idea — in this case, for example, personal freedom — and turn it into an ideology, creating a prism through which they judge everything.

This gets into an interesting Catholic belief which is that governments, all governments, derive their authority from God and therefore are charged, accordingly, with responsibilities.  That belief is the one that causes people to misconstrue the old "Devine right" of kings, which isn't what it means, so much as it means that all authority is ultimately God's and any legitimate exercise of authority, whatever it is, is only to the extent that God permits it, and therefore must be used accordingly.

Of course, this is also a lecture aimed at individualist who value personal freedom or collective safety in this context, which is something that has been seen all over the globe.  The Pope clearly disapproves.

And that's where the op ed then takes a big turn, returning to common Francis themes.

God asks us to dare to create something new. We cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the crisis. We need economies that give to all access to the fruits of creation, to the basic needs of life: to land, lodging and labor. We need a politics that can integrate and dialogue with the poor, the excluded and the vulnerable, that gives people a say in the decisions that affect their lives. We need to slow down, take stock and design better ways of living together on this earth.

The pandemic has exposed the paradox that while we are more connected, we are also more divided. Feverish consumerism breaks the bonds of belonging. It causes us to focus on our self-preservation and makes us anxious. Our fears are exacerbated and exploited by a certain kind of populist politics that seeks power over society. It is hard to build a culture of encounter, in which we meet as people with a shared dignity, within a throwaway culture that regards the well-being of the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled and the unborn as peripheral to our own well-being.

To come out of this crisis better, we have to recover the knowledge that as a people we have a shared destination. The pandemic has reminded us that no one is saved alone. What ties us to one another is what we commonly call solidarity. Solidarity is more than acts of generosity, important as they are; it is the call to embrace the reality that we are bound by bonds of reciprocity. On this solid foundation we can build a better, different, human future.

In doing this its interesting to see the references to the Catholic Social Teaching of Solidarity.  Solidarity and Subsidiarity are old Catholic themes, prominent in the writings of Pope Leo XVIII and best recalled from Rarem Novarum.  A really well schooled Catholic will recognize the references to Solidarity right away, but Protestants, and frankly most Catholics for that matter, won't.

The editorial also recalls themes that Pope Francis has had throughout his papacy in regard to economics, and which seemingly have evolved towards a certain type of internationalism in a way more recently, but it's not specific on them.  Criticism of capitalism, however are nothing new in Catholic circles and indeed Rarem Novarum criticized both capitalism and socialism, giving rise to the development of distributism.  Interestingly, that latter fact is hardly noticed anywhere, and hasn't been by Pope Francis himself, perhaps because capitalism has come to so dominate free market economies that the free market concept of distributism is hardly known to even exist outside of the small population of (somewhat gadfly) distributists.

At any rate, it's not a bad editorial.  I doubt it'll be very impactful, however.  Pope Francis has spoken too much, and too vaguely, and written too much, and too vaguely, to really be noticed very much now outside of Catholic circles, and the orthodox, who would be most likely to normally listen and try to heed what he says, have assumed a sort of fatigued state of indifference.  There's some sort of lesson in all of that. 

And part of that lesson has to deal with his intent.  If you read all of his works that touch upon the economy, and there's a bunch, what you are left with is a pretty clear impression that Pope Francis is arguing for a overhauling of the entire global economy in a way that reflects his writings.  This would emphasize a certain sort of international Solidarity (in Catholic social teaching terms) acknowledging everyone as our brothers and sisters, with a certain sort of regionalism reflecting, vaguely, Subsidiarity, while also stress the need to aid the poor and not fall into the vices of consumerism.  Here too, however, the problem is that those themes have been intertwined with numerous other ones and never clarified, so they're lost, irrespective of whether we agree with them or not.

Popes, contrary to what some Rad Trads tend to believe, have never decreed anyone system of anything, including economics, to be "the" Catholic ideal.  And they're not going to.  So Pope Francis isn't straying off the well paved road in that respect.  But Pope's have been a lot more direct and succinct.  As Pope Francis hasn't been, it'd take a clear, limited and precise encyclical or writing to do that.  If that's coming, it's coming late in the day and after so much has already been written that getting everyone to turn the volume back up to listen will be difficult.

Lex Anteinternet: More on Societal Scurvy

Lex Anteinternet: More on Societal Scurvy

More on Societal Scurvy

We linked this in earlier this week, but perhaps we should have saved it for today:

Lex Anteinternet: SOCIETAL SCURVY:   SOCIETAL SCURVY

A series of related items appeared in the news today, and we'd pondered linking this in here.

The them of this entry from Catholic Stuff You Should Know has to deal with the impact of Sunday services in unknown and unseen ways.  It's excellently done, and deals with community, or lack of it, in this Pandemic Era.

We run a series here every Sunday, as the few folks who routinely stop in know, called Sunday Morning Scenes. These are, of course, just pictures from our companion blogs in which we've photographed churches, for the most part, although occasionally they include commentary.

There's no doubt that the pandemic has been hard on community, and that very much includes churches.  In my own region the Bishop of Cheyenne has suspended the obligation to attend Mass that Catholics normally have.  That is, church attendance isn't optional for Catholics, normally.  Right now it is here.

For a time the churches opened back up and when they did, I resumed going to Mass.  I missed it in more ways than one and felt an obligation to do so.  Indeed, I also was critical of the Bishops in the US stopping public Masses in general and felt they should not have.

Now, however, that we are in the thick of the pandemic I've not gone the last few weeks.  I may be in a category that's distinctly different from some others around here, but having watched Coronavirus rip through the legal community, killing at least one local lawyer and disabling, at least temporarily, some others, I'm taking this seriously.  Indeed, I'm in the "avoidance" category of people who isn't going to stores, and isn't going to restaurants, and the like right now.  I'm stilling going into my office as I have to, but for the next few weeks I'm riding this out by minimalizing my contact with people as much as I can.

There's no doubt, however, that this has crossed  over to a point that's having a negative personal impact on the psyche of a lot of people.  In today's news there are reports that alcohol and marihuana abuse are at an all time high.  Pornography use is as well. Both of these are addressed in the Societal Scurvy episode mentioned above.  In Japan suicide deaths for last month exceeded the the number of COVID deaths in that country and are back up at rates last scene in 2015, which of course is not all that long ago.

At some point, something has to be done, but what?  Will we break through this and be back out in January?  

On being cautious, while I rarely mention it I had a childhood asthma condition and after having talked to several people who have had it, and survived it, I'm pretty sure that the common views in some quarters that its not as bad as people claim don't hold up, at least for some people.  So, yes, I'm now worried.  Not panicked, but worried.

And I'm worried about society too.  People holed up and not getting out at all, some people naively fleeting to rural areas in the belief that it can't get to them there.  Things are not good right now.

I wonder if people dealt with this better in 1917-18?  I'm not convinced we are dealing with this well right now.  Indeed, in a lot of ways, I think we're less well situated to deal with it now, than we were then.

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

November 18, 1966. The Latin Rite of the Catholic Church relaxes the Abstention Rule.

Smelt being eaten by members of Congress and their guests.

On this day the Latin Rite Catholic Bishops of the United States relaxed the rule on abstaining from meat on Fridays throughout the year.  This followed a Papal direction in 1962 that the Friday penitential requirement be adopted to local conditions, reflecting  a move by the Church focused on that goal. The same move resulted in the vernacular replacing Latin in the Mass at about the same time.

In the case of the Catholic Bishops of the United States the removal has created some confusion.  Fridays retain their penitential character and Catholics are urged to substitute something for abstaining from meat but few do.  Indeed, there's debate on whether there's any requirement to do and the fine, orthodox, Catholic apologist maintains there is not.  Some others maintain there very much is, with those holding that view tending towards the Catholic Trad community.

To the surprise of American "Roman" Catholics, the rule was not done away with globally and it remains a matter of Church law in many other localities in the world.  It also remains one, of course, during Lent.

There are a lot of rumors in the Protestant world about this practice, a lot of which are frankly absurd.  Old anti Catholic myths regarding fish on Fridays were one of the things that I still heard in school when I was a teen, usually centered around some completely bogus economic theory.  The actual basic reason for the practice is that it was a remaining Latin Rite penitential practice of which there had once been many, but which had dwindled down to just a few in the Latin Rite over time.  In the Eastern Rite and the Orthodox Churches, however, they remain numerous and occur throughout the year.

Indeed, the practice in the Eastern Rite and Orthodox Churches is instructive in that their fasts often extend beyond abstaining from meat and to other things.  During Great Lent, for example, they ultimately extend to oils, dairy and alcohol.  

The reason for abstention from meat (there was never any requirement that people actually eat fish) reflected the logistical economy of an earlier time.  Today fish is readily available on the table no matter where you are, but in earlier times this wasn't so.  Abstention from meat limited diets and protein sources other than fish were regarded, and frankly usually still are, as more celebratory.  People like fish, of course, but not too many people are going to sit down to a big Thanksgiving dinner of flounder.  The goal wasn't to starve people, but to focus on penance while still sustaining their needs.  Limiting food to the plain, and fish for most people, if available, was plain, emphasized that.

As with a lot of things, over time in Protestant countries this practice tended to mark Catholics and also became subject to silly myths.  Even now, over fifty years after the practice was relaxed in the United States, you'll occasionally find somebody who will insult Catholics with a derogatory nickname from the era related to fish.  Likewise, like a lot of dietary practices that have long ceased, people born far too late to really experience "fish on Fridays" will claim they did.

Ironically, of course, fish has gone from a less favored food even fifty years ago to a dietary and culturally prized one.  It's one of the odd ways in which the religious practices of Catholics, to include fasting, has come back around as a secular health practice.  And as Catholic orthodoxy has returned as the Baby Boomers wane, fish on Fridays has been reintroduced voluntarily among some orthodox or simply observant Catholics, even where they are not required to do it.

Saturday, October 10, 2020

Lex Anteinternet: October 10, 1920. The passing of Hudson Stuck

Lex Anteinternet: October 10, 1920. An Historic World Series Game, ...

Also on this day, early Alaskan figure Hudson Stuck passed away from pneumonia at Fort Yukon.  He was 57 years old.


Stuck was the co-leader of the first expedition to climb Denali.

Stuck was an Englishman born in London who immigrated to the United States in 1885 after graduating from London's King's College.  In the US he worked as a cowboy and a teacher in Texas before enrolling in the Episcopal University of the South.  Following graduation he was ordained as an Episcopal Priest and served at first in Texas, where he was active in trying to provide relief to the poor and in opposing child labor.  He also preached against lynching at a time when it was at a Southern high.

In 1904 he went to Alaska where he was an Episcopal Archdeacon, a position in that church equivalent to a senior ordained clergyman.  Stuck exemplified muscular Christianity and was well suited for Alaska.  He was an Episcopal missionary priest there.  In 1913 he co-led, with Harry Karstens, the first ascent of Denali. He authored an excellent book on the topic, which I have read.  Two of his four books on his time in Alaska remain in print.

While the Episcopal Church has no means or process for canonizations, Stuck has a day on the Episcopal Church's calendar and is celebrated as a saint.