Monthly Archives: February 2016

How does our culture move forward without a recognition of our Judeo-Christian roots,  to reclaim Camelot and that misty kingdom of knights and honor?

A generation born in the 1920’s that included many atheists and agnostics is dying. Whether they are surprised or not when greeted by Infinite Love, the God of the Ten Commandments, we believers are glad those unbelievers understood that Western Civilization depended upon the teachings of Christ, if not belief in him. The “greatest generation” recognized, quietly assumed, that Judeo-Christian roots were essential to the rule of law and respect for the individual.

One of those atheists was Sir John Mortimer (1923-2009). In a marvelous article in the January-February issue of Touchstone, Raymond J. Brown writes about the “New Rules of the Game” in “Farewell, Old Chessmate.” Many of us know Mortimer’s work through the BBC films of his books, Rumpole of the Bailey and others. Mr. Brown quotes Mortimer: “It is good to know that both the faithful and the faithless can still be playing from the same chessboard.”

Evidently, the satirical Mortimer was one of those unbelievers who felt comfortable living in the residue of Christian culture, even indebted to the source of the residue. He appreciated the great Christian contributions to the canon of English Literature and his own contemporary Christian writers:

“No one can deny that the Christian belief in the supreme importance of each individual soul was a great advance on the faith which thought of slaves as soulless. The King James Bible is of extraordinary power and beauty…. Much of the literature I’ve valued, the art I’ve most enjoyed, has been produced by unquestioning Christians. Whether I’m a believer or not, I’m a part of Christian civilization.”   (Where There’s a Will)

As Christianity’s influence has ebbed, Christians have seen the danger signs. Father Richard John Neuhaus (1936-2009) in The Naked Public Square (1984) called for Churches to re-enter the culture, to re-inform the debate in America and the West. With the retreat of Christians from this common conversation, Western culture would revert to pre-Christian chaos: slavery, discrimination, the strong bullying the weak, tyranny to keep the peace. Western freedoms and respect for the individual would be denied in the urgency of efficiency and sameness, soon to be forgotten in the mists of time.

I wonder if Mr. Mortimer considered how future generations would fare when his own generation no longer guarded the gates of Western culture.  As the nihilism of the liberal academic elite polices our public universities man’s natural religious impulse is redirected to saving the earth, saving the whales, saving the purple spotted badger. History of Western Civilization is not required so that an uneducated electorate votes by twittering soundbites and flickering images.

Generations of students have been raised with few Christian moral boundaries. If it feels good do it. Release your inner child or monster. Where Christianity defends the border between right and wrong by denouncing bad behavior, today’s creed encourages grievance tantrums, narcissistic self-pity, angry riots,  silencing free speech by demanding trigger-safe zones. Today’s creed divides and incites. Achievement is discouraged in order to assure equality and lack of offense. Excellence slips into mediocrity, boredom into depression. We reach for pills and cheap thrills in our books and movies.

With the death of Chief Justice Antonin Scalia, America has moved further along the road of indecent descent to a pre-Christian world. A brilliant scholar (and Catholic) who understood the need to preserve right and discourage wrong, Justice Scalia will be greatly mourned by those who see clearly the vital importance of the Judeo-Christian foundation to democracy. Perhaps his greatest contribution was his desire not to legislate but truly interpret the Constitution, empowering we the people to pass good law through elected representatives.

The faithless and the faithful must play from the same chessboard in order for democracy to be passed on to our children. As Mr. Brown concludes,

“The chessboard will likely not be playable, because the same rules, courtesies, limits, traditions, and possibilities will not be recognized by both players, much less understood. There will be no common ground between the believer and the unbeliever – not because militant atheists will have intentionally sabotaged the match, but because Western Christians will have allowed too much accommodation to the world, the flesh, and the devil.”

One is reminded of liberal Christianity, the dilution of belief in pulpit and pew, the subtle changing of the rules of the game to accommodate all comers. Confession is ridiculed, repentance a threat to self-esteem. Unborn babies are considered the property of their mothers, owned and enslaved. To speak against these things is to invite silencing and persecution.

Tyranny is near. As we move into the Lenten season, we must carry the Cross to Easter’s resurrection. We must pray for our nation, for the survival of Western civilization, for that misty land of Camelot that was only a dream but became a reality in Great Britain and her daughter, America.

We must pray that democracy and freedom will not be lost in the mist.

I’ve been thinking about the word passion. My bishop often said that passion was the union of love and suffering, love and sacrifice, and I often wondered about that. The root is passio, Latin for enduring, suffering. In the first century it came to refer to the suffering of Christ on the Cross. It appears that love became part of the word passion only after Christ’s sacrifice, when this particular suffering became united with the love of God.

The word passion is used in Holy Scripture in the Acts of the Apostles, where St. Luke writes in the first chapter: “to whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.”

Over time, passion came to mean extraordinary feeling, a super-human surge of life pulsing through the heart and soul. While for many years it meant emotional romantic love, it also came to mean a strong liking/loving anything – a passion for painting, for food, for music, etc. It is a word that has grown in power. What is your passion? Follow your passion! I admire your passion…

In fact, passion denotes today an enthusiasm that goes to the heart of who we are and who we are meant to be. It is the God-life within us that urges us to be our purest selves, to train our truest talents, to sculpt our souls and senses into the perfection that God intended when He formed us in the womb. We may have left behind the suffering, enduring, or sacrificial meaning of passion, or have we?

When we say someone is passionate about something there is a sense that that person would sacrifice, go to a great length, to work hard, to discipline and deny, to attain or achieve that something. There is an implied focus, the loss of pleasures or lesser passions, to arrive at the goal: long hard practice to kick that ball down the grass to its win; long hard practice to play Beethoven’s concerto; long hard practice to make the perfect soufflé. When we are passionate we desire to achieve the reward. We sacrifice. We suffer.

Love and suffering. Passion. 

It is no coincidence that the Epistle for today, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of our journey into Christ’s Passion, is St. Paul’s glorious thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. Naturally, it is all about love (charity):

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”   KJV

We know only in part what love is, what love demands, what love sacrifices and how it suffers. One day we will see fully. But until then we have Christ’s Passion – His death on the Cross. His resurrection attests to who He is and opens our eyes to the reality, yes, the passion of God’s love. Such love is beyond human understanding, unsearchable in its riches.

And yet we search for love’s riches in the Church, His Body, His Bride. We search and we find, opening the door to His knock, inviting Him in, He who waits on the threshold of our hearts. For He is passionate to be with us and within us, lighting our lives with His brilliance.

When we understand passion, that union of love and suffering, we begin to understand compassion, looking upon the suffering of others with-passion, with the desire to share the suffering, to alleviate it. We begin our own journey of love, into love and its demands, its joy as well as its sacrifice.

And so we approach Ash Wednesday, the beginning of our journey to Jerusalem, our pilgrimage into Lent, into the love of God, into the Passion of Christ, to arrive at Easter and our own resurrections.