St Augustine on Love

I give you a new commandment: love one another: not as people who pretend to love in order to corrupt one another, nor indeed as people love one another genuinely but in a human way. Rather, they love one another as those who belong to God. All of them are children of the Most High and consequently brethren of his only Son. They share with each other the love with which he leads them to the end that will bring them fulfilment and the true satisfaction of their real desires. For when God is all in all, there is no desire that is unfulfilled.

Eulogies at Funerals

A friend of mine called recently to vent about the awfulness of his parish. He attended a funeral where, instead of the homily, gave a pretty lame eulogy about the deceased. The poor woman was not actually a very pleasant or sociable individual, and of course Fr Folkmass went on and on about how popular she was. Then he invites the family to say a few words about the dear departed and nobody can think of anyone to say. My friend was cringing as the old duck's brother stood up and told a couple of childhood stories about how the departed dealt with her weight problem. So it went from bad to worse.

Why, oh why, do Catholic priests have so little understanding of what liturgy is about? A funeral Mass is not primarily a memorial service. A funeral Mass is not first and foremost an opportunity to comfort the bereaved. A funeral Mass does something. In it the Church offers the sacrifice of Calvary for the repose of the soul of one of her departed sons or daughters. The funeral Mass is an action of the church which applies the benefits of Christ's atoning death to the soul of the deceased. The funeral Mass is a solemn rite of passage in which the Holy Church hands on to God the soul of the departed and commends his body to the ground or to the flames.

This is what a priest should be doing at the Mass. At the wake, by all means, get Uncle Harry to tell a few ripe stories about the old rogue. At the reception have a few drinks and get everyone to reminisce about the good times and the bad times, but not at the funeral. Another friend in England told me about a funeral he attended where Ernie (the deceased) was an unpleasant alcoholic with no particular gifts. When the family was asked to say a few words, his son Sid stood up and said, "My Dad loved to watch football on telly. Every Friday night he bought ten lottery tickets, then went down the pub and downed ten pints. He liked his beer, did my Dad." Then he sat down. That was it. There's nothing in the world wrong with being an ordinary fellow from an ordinary family, and the sadness and waste of alcoholism is awful, but such sentiments at a funeral don't exactly inspire or uplift anyone.

When we resort to eulogies at funerals we do not do the departed any favors. The liturgy should raise the departed to the dignity of the son or daughter of the King. HadJust as no one should eulogize the simple soul who did nothing much with their life, so no one should eulogize the great person who accomplished much. In death they are equal. The funeral liturgy should be done straight up. Say the Black. Do the Red. In this way the solemn liturgy elevates the humble and humbles the great.

And another thing: funerals are meant to be sad. Black should be worn. Dignified grief should be encouraged. A funeral is not a 'celebration of Stanley's life'. A funeral is not 'a time of joy because Mildred is in heaven now.' How tacky and trite is that? No. A funeral should be sad. Someone had died for goodness sake. Furthermore, people need to grieve. They need to work through the terror of death. They need to face reality. A solemn, sad, sober and serious funeral helps them to do that. A silly, shallow, superficial and stupid memorial service or 'celebration of Pat's life' only encourages them to look the other way and take a feel good cop out from reality.

No. Give me the funeral march. Give me solemn young men in black with serious faces to mourn my passing. Give me widows and women in black veils and gloves wiping away tears. Give me the smoke of incense to purify my bones. Give me the water of life to remind me of my baptism. Give me a requiem Mass and may all who are there--whether a multitude or the faithful few--grieve me with the dignity in death that I once hoped for in life.

Snow on Dung Pile Theologies

A reader asks why Protestant pile of dung theology is a re-hash of Arianism. It would have been more precise to say that it is a re-hash of Adoptionism. Whoops. Blog posts are written quickly. 

First I should explain what I mean by 'Protestant pile of dung theologies.' This is a reference to Luther's idea that because of original sin we are totally depraved and are worthless in God's eyes. However, because of the death of Christ God looks on us and does not see our sin and depravity, but Christ's righteousness. Luther likened this to a pile of dung that is covered by snow.

This is more technically (but less colorfully) called 'imputed righteousness.' Catholics do not believe this. We believe that through faith and baptism, and the continued sacramental life of grace, Christ's righteousness is infused into us, not imputed. In other words, it doesn't just cover us, making us superficially and outwardly good in God's eyes. Instead, God's grace really does get into us and transforms us from the inside out. It gets down deep to the very foundations of our being and re-makes us into the image of Christ.

Adoptionism was the Christological heresy that Jesus Christ was not truly and completely divine, but that his divinity was something he 'adopted'. One such teaching said he became divine at his baptism. This is unsatisfactory because it suggests that he was a sinful person who simply had divinity imputed to him at some stage. This parallels the Protestant pile of dung theologies because they also suggest that Christ's righteousness is not something that is deep within us as a transforming power, but something that is simply imputed to us.

However, there is a parallel to Arianism as well. Arius taught that Jesus Christ was not truly one with the Father. Inasmuch as 'pile of dung theologies' deny that we can experience theosis and be truly transformed into the likeness of Christ, they echo Arianism's denial of the full integration of God and Man in Christ Jesus.

Bald Guy Worried

Old Baldie is slightly worried that some readers are still not aware that Todd Unctuous is one of his alter egos. Let me spell it out: Todd is not a real person. Fr. Dwight writes the Todd Unctuous columns himself. He makes Todd sound as stupid as possible. This is done to make fun of dumb main stream media journalist types.

Todd on Torture

Our MSM commentator, Todd Unctuous comments on a recent news report...

Did you see the result of a recent survey that churchgoers are in favor of torture? I am not a religious man myself, but I respect people who believe a religion and try to do good in the world. Like many people, I am spiritual, but not religious. There are many inspiring and uplifting things in life, like the quotes page in Reader's Digest. However, don't get me wrong. I believe there are many good religious people. I just have not met many.

This survey which proves that religious people are in favor of torture comes as no surprise. Religious people not only approve of torture, but down through the ages they have been experts at it. Remember the Spanish Inquisition? This was a terrible disease which happened to the world in 1919 when many people fell ill, and many people died and the religious people said it was 'God's judgment'.

What about that situation called Jonestown in Guyana where the famous preacher Bob Jones got people together to live in the jungle? Then he made them drink cyanide together. This is just another example of religious people being in favor of torture. When it is not physical torture, it is emotional and mental torture caused by making people feel guilty. This is something all religious people do.

I had a friend in elementary school who went to a Catholic school and he said the nuns used to hit them with rulers, and the priest would lock them in a closet. Many people who went to Catholic schools recount similar horrific tales of torture and bad things happening, and the present Pope in Rome is himself a former Nazi, and the one before him came from a communist country.

I am sure religion is mostly a harmless pastime, but when you find out that religious people actually admit to being in favor of torture it makes you think doesn't it? Maybe the time to be 'tolerant' to such people is over. Maybe their Sunday activities aren't as harmless as they appear. The government should crack down on these crypto terrorists, after all. Remember that it was religious people who flew those jets into the twin towers. Remember that?

It makes you think doesn't it?

Podcast - Lord of Love -2

Here is the second of my Easter season homilies. Continuing on the first epistle of John, it focuses on the Love of God we have received in our hearts and how it makes us children of God, and if we are children of God, then the world will hate us. It will hate us as it hated the master.

I'm afraid the homily was a bit last minute and I'm still hoarse, but see what you think.

Wimmin's Ordination?

If there is any doubt in your mind about women's ordination in the Catholic Church go over to Creative Minority Report and not only view the video of the recent illicit ordinations in Philadelphia, but more importantly, read Cardinal Rigali's clear and unambiguous re statement of the church's teaching on this matter.

Athanasius and the Incarnation

I apologize for being a slack blogger over the last week. I had laryngitis and the usual busy-ness rather got on top of me.

On Saturday we celebrated the memorial of St Athanasius, that stalwart defender of Christological orthodoxy. He battled against Arianism and various other heresies, and it struck me while saying Mass on Saturday that the full doctrine of the incarnation is vital not just theologically, but spiritually and in our Eucharistic theology.

Jesus Christ was God from God, light from light, true God from true God. His manhood and his divinity were all of a unity. Every scrap of his humanity was divinized and every part of his Godhead was incarnate.

The heretics had trouble with this and said that Jesus was a man who only seemed to be God, or a god who only seemed to be man. They said he was a man on whom divinity was placed or a man in whom divinity grew and developed. No. The divinity wasn't just pasted on top of the humanity. It was an integral part of who Jesus was.

So it is with our spirituality. So often we think that our spiritual life is something we sort of paste on top of our sinful humanity. It is something we put on like a cloak. When we believe this we become pious and focus on the outward forms of religion. Or we believe that our spirituality is something that is just a matter of right belief or right doctrine, and that what we do with our bodies doesn't really matter.

These false spiritualities parallel Christological heresies. Instead we need to see that Christ is working his life in us at every level of our being, in every cell of our bodies, in every moment of our experience, in every relationship, in every decision, in every mental and emotional and physical action or thought or feeling. The Holy Spirit want to take over it all and not just slap on a spiritual happy face, but transform us from the very ground level of our being upwards so that we might be transformed into 'Christians'--little Christs.

G.K.Chesterton said 'Every argument is a theological argument'. It's true. The bogus spiritualities are all, at their heart, Christological heresies. The shallow New Age theologies are forms of Gnosticism. The stupid self help therapies are only Pelagianism dressed up. The Protestant 'I'm a pile of dung but God puts a layer of snow over me' theologies are simply a re-hash of Arianism.

You can keep it all. Give me full, red blooded Catholicism. Give me the incarnation--Athanasius' incarnation, and let me be transformed right down to the very deep and dark and dirty parts of me, for it is 'here in dust and dirt, O here, that the lilies of Thy love appear.'