My First Feast of Corpus Christi

Today was my first Feast of Corpus Christi.  The Church of the Most Holy Trinity conducted a procession through downtown Augusta this afternoon.  I wasn’t really sure what it meant, but I participated anyway.  It was strangely moving.  One of the writers at Catholic Online explains it a lot better than I can.

“After having received the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ in Holy Communion, Catholic Christians proceed from the Sanctuary into the Streets of the world, pausing along the way for solemn worship, songs of adoration, and holding the Lord aloft, enthroned. The procession symbolizes the ongoing redemptive mission of Jesus Christ to the world as it is now lived out through his Church.”

It was hot, and the streets of Augusta were almost empty except for a remnant of the church walking behind the Eucharist, testifying to the world that there are still real Catholics in the Church.  I was honored and priviledged to be there.

A Week of Red Clay and Sand

When I decided to blog, I chose the title, “Red Clay and Sand,” because I had lived in the Sandhills of South Carolina and the red clay area of Georgia.  Last week, I lived a real Red Clay and Sand Week.  On June 5 and 6, Kathy and I attended the Georgia Mountain Roots and Music Festival at the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds in Hiawassee, Georgia.  Most of the music for the two days was Bluegrass.  The exceptions to the rule were a band from Baton Rouge named “Red Stick Ramblers” and another group called “The Greencards.”  These two bands played different types of blended music to create their own style.  They were different, especially the Ramblers who sang half their set in French.   However, as I said the emphasis for the weekend was Bluegrass.  The lineup included Buck and Nelson, Irons in the Fire, Dale Ann Bradley, who won two annual awards as “IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year” without my ever hearing her and sure sounded rather ordinary during the show, Seldom Scene, who seemed really proud of the fact that there was thirty years between their last two records, Town  Mountain, a group of college kids from Asheville who did one great cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire,” Jim Lauderdale who wore a torquoise suit and talked incessantly about Jim Lauderdale, and my favorite, The Steeldrivers. I actually purchased a Steeldrivers’ CD after their set.  We were tired and left before Dan Tyminski did his set.  Kathy and I were really impressed with the amount of concert time we purchased for $40.00 apiece, especially since it was inside an air-conditioned auditorium.

We camped at the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds on Lake Chatuge from Wednesday to Sunday.

Lake Chatuge Campgrounds, Hiawassee, Georgia

We left on Sunday, spent the night at home, and continued to the Sand part of the week at Edisto Island.  We camped in the Live Oak Campground at the State Park on Edisto.  We had a great time-spent a full day and a half sitting on the beach, staring at waves, reading and getting sunburned (not enough experience with continuous spray suntan lotion in the wind), ate seafood at the Pavilion, and bought a couple of souvenirs.  It was a relaxing week.

Edisto Beach

At Least Ruhama is Female, Episcopalian Sigh of Relief

Alberto Curie, a very popular, former Catholic priest in Miami, also referred to as “Father Oprah,” got caught on camera making-out with a woman in direct violation of his vow of celibacy when he became a priest.  He met with his Bishop and requested assistance, they talked and Alberto slinked off to the local Episcopal Church to see what they had to offer.  Of course, they welcomed him and his “fiancee” with open arms.  They had a big public ceremony with the media duly recording each step of the renouncement of Catholicism and acceptance of Episcopalianism.  The Catholic Arch-Bishop of Miami was appalled saying that the Catholic Church never made such a big to-do when an Episcopalian returned to Catholicism.  Padre, you miss the point, it was no big deal that they were accepting a fallen Catholic priest, the big deal was that he was  coming to his priesthood with an actual woman, a female, ”fiancee,”  that’s quite unusual in the modern Episcopal Church.

Written After Reading Eliot

Aqua exedit

(Water eats)

 

Aqua exedit,

Green tendrilous bites,

Holocausts offered by Orion .

Fangs were unseen in the dark

And no one knew until the moon,

On certain tides with certain light,

Screamed the wasted bones of Phlebas

And bloody Promethean chains.

Mountain to trench,

Aqua exedit.

 

That shudder came from the deep brain,

Before stone or fire or wheel or page.

That  dawn brought murmur and wonder,

A flash of who and when and why.

Don’t tell.

But how ?

When no other knows of words,

You are alone in your scream.

 

 

The moon speaks.

 Aqua exedit.

A few twos survived

To divide again.

Aqua exedit

And land dawns green.

Aqua exedit

And cell becomes man.

Alone, the tree on the island falls.

Aqua exedit.

The moon speaks.

 

Alone,  the same island sound

Endlessly repeated across ocean soul,

Escapes to other worlds where water has dined and gone.

The Silence of the Bishops

It seems that bureaucracy is bureaucracy, no matter if it is sacred or secular.  For almost a month, I have been trying to find out how many bishops are in the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops.  Googling the Catholic sites achieved nothing; Catholic On-line did not post my comment concerning the number.  So, no matter how much it galls me to admit, I used Wikipedia.  I sat down with the list on Wikipedia and my calculator and determined that there are 262 Bishops with their names listed.  There are 265 if you list the militaryBishops, but I don’t know their standing, so I left them out of the count.  I also have no idea of the accuracy of the list, but at least I now have some kind of answer.  If the United States Council of Catholic Bishops  is concerned about the accuracy, please leave me a comment, I will be more than happy to massage my numbers.

This concern with numbers has nothing to do with trivial pursuit or mathematical anality.  I am, and have been, making a point about the lack of noise from the the Catholic Bishops in the US concerning Obama and Notre Dame.  If one reads Catholic Online and several of the other Catholic blogs, one would assume that there is a major uprising among the Bishops concerning Obama appearing at Notre Dame.  One of the headlines from Catholic Online today reads, “Now it is 46:  More Bishops Against ND Scandal.”  One would assume that there was a groundswell of Bishophic outrage against President Obama speaking at and receiving a degree from Notre Dame.  It just ain’t so.  There is no groundswell.  Most of the media accounts report that the “scandal” is being driven by a small number of conservative Catholics who are out-of-step with the majority of Catholic thought.

“Catholics are a diverse group of people,” said John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Center for Religion and the Press, explaining the poll. “There’s been a decline in Obama’s numbers that’s not too far out of step with his decline overall. The rest of this, a lot of this, is internal politics between conservative Catholics and liberal Catholics.”

All this may be media bias, but my small effort at statistics reflects otherwise.  There are 262 Bishops, 46 have spoken out.  That means that 18% of American Bishops consider this a “scandal” wothy of them setting down their miter and picking up a pen.   85%, over 4 in 5, see no problem or see nothing worth commenting about.  Since the majority of the Bishops serve the majority of the Catholics, what does this say about the Church in general?

I left the Episcopal Church because the battle for the Episcopal soul had been won by those who questioned the existence of anything Biblical and were more interested in numbers, popularity, being diverse (there is that word again), being popular, and appealing to all the popular secularist and liberal causes of the day.  As I have heard priests say over and over in that church, “we don’t want anyone turned away from the table of Jesus.”  So, in their effort to compromise and be open-minded, they have ended with a church with gay bishops, women priests, priests who think it is okay to be both Muslim and Christian simultaneously, a female head of their leading theological seminary who calls “abortion a blessing,”  and local congregations who think that none of this applies to them.

So, I came to the Catholic Church looking for unity and find that the cancer of secularism has crept into the American Church.  Maybe crept is not the right word.  Secularism is full-fledged and gobbling more and more American Catholicism every day.  The most notable Catholics are proud of their “liberal Views” and think that they can travel to Rome and teach the Pope.  The Bishops are quiet unless it is to support another liberal political view or be against another war.  They plead for money for the poor and pour millions into settlement funds for priests who couldn’t keep their hands off children.   All of this could be forgiven, if there was some sort of unity or reformation or a return to traditional Catholicism.  As I look around I don’t see it.  As a new convert, maybe I am expecting too much.  Maybe, I haven’t come to terms with being realistic in my faith.  I am too new, and you know what they say about converts. But just  maybe I don’t want to become a once a year, proud to be lapsed catholic – maybe I yearn for the one true faith — the one unwavering, traditional, centuries old church who traces its succession to Peter who knew Christ.  I don’t need modernism, I have seen it at work.  It ain’t purty.

Doubt Rewarded

A part of the gospel reading in Mass yesterday is one of my favorite parts of the Bible.  The story in John 20 of the conversation between Jesus and Thomas after Jesus’ resurrection has always intrigued and satisfied me in a way few other passages have.  The disciples have told Thomas that they have seen the resurrected Jesus and Thomas responds in the way that most of us would, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  After all the disciples, who weren’t your most trustworthy bunch of folks expected Thomas to take their word that they had seen a living, resurrected Jesus.  These were the same folks who, except for John, had deserted Jesus during the whole crucifixion saga, had hid out for fear of reprisal, and one, Peter, had publicly denied him prior to his death.  These were not your most trustworthy witnesses, and no one can blame Thomas for not buying it.  Later, when Jesus appeared to them again, he did not chide Thomas for his unbelief, but rather he offered Thomas the proof Thomas asked.  Thomas touched his hands and put his hand in the wound in Jesus’s side.  Then Thomas made the first post-resurrection testimony to the deity of Jesus by saying to him, “My Lord and My God.”  The truth had been revealed to Thomas and he, like the church to follow, recognized just who Jesus was.  His doubt was rewarded-not discouraged.  Thomas was answered, not chastised.

The Whimpering Church

On my way this afternoon to the local grocery to pick up some dog food, I was listening to a new program on the local talk radio station.  The program was called, I think, “The Allen Hunt Show-Where Faith and Reality Meet.”  The main topic of discussion was the covering of the “IHS,” an ancient symbol of Jesus, by Georgetown University during a speech by President Obama.  The callers provided both sides of the question without a corresponding “hand-wringing” rant by the host.  What transpired was what many would consider a polite, intelligent, rational discussion of the situation.  I know it is hard to believe, but there seems, at first glance, to be two sides to this story. 

First of all, let me state that I am what the government considers a “right wing extremist,” since I meet all the criteria in the recently published Department of Homeland Security alert.  Secondly, I am a recent convert to Catholicism.  That means to the majority in Washington and academia that I am a nut.

However, I understand that if Obama had delivered his speech below the IHS sign, the right wing press would have predictably criticized him for trying to be the new Messiah.  Georgetown University approved the request of the White House to cover all references to Georgetown University as well as all references to Catholicism and Jesus because the the Obama administration considers the normal backdrop for such speeches to be  the American Flag.  Georgetown complied and the result is an uproar from the right in that Georgetown University denied its faith by covering up the IHS.

I don’t believe that the thought of denial ever occurred to the majority of those in charge of Georgetown.  The opportunity to bask in the popularity of the new President and his attendant media blinded them to anything other than their chance to bathe in secular popularity.  The President, the President, did you hear me, the President, not some vague idea of a crusading Jesus, was coming to Georgetown University.  All else paled beside the glorious chance at publicity associated with the fifteen minutes that Obama was speaking.  Since this was a secular event, Georgetown in the spirit of Political Correctness saw nothing wrong with covering a sacred symbol.  After all, they had complied with many secular requests before (they don’t pray, they have abortions, they don’t care about marriage).  They gave no thought to the fact that they were in essence denying a part of who they were supposed to be in response to a chance for a collective ten minutes of fame.  Were they right or wrong?  I don’t know, but the majority of the outrage seems to be coming from the quarter that have adopted a stance of Obama Derangement Syndrome-from the same ones who derided the Left for hating everything Bush comes  a policy of hating everything Obama.

Several of the persons associated with Georgetown, at least in the interview segments that were selected to be aired on this show, indicated that there was very little concern associated with the decision.  After all, the Catholic faith is of very little concern to the majority at Georgetown.  To cover the IHS is only a small concern in the day of relativism and political correctness.  As I have pointed out several times in my blogs about Notre Dame, the majority, a vast majority, of Catholics and Notre Dame  students, alumni, and faculty have remained silent in the controversy surrounding Obama and his degree.  In an apostate church, this silence speaks volumes more than any attempt at rationalization or appeasement.  Jesus and the Faith is outdated, outmoded, and the truly intelligent just ignore it even when they are priest, bishop, or professor.  After all, the brilliant know more than the unwashed minions, and besides the Pope he ain’t even American.   (In the interest of Political Correctness’s and national lack of sense of humor, I must point out that the previous two sentences were sarcastic satire.)  Between the big yawn and the smug tsk-tsks, the students, administration, and faculty are shaking their heads and wondering if they can get tickets to Sex Positive Week, which mysteriously coincides with the first week of  Lent.  Just in case you wanted to know, Olivia Chitayat, Georgetown Sex Positive Week student organizer (she has a title!!), described Sex Positive as a movement promoting events, classes, and media aimed at helping people become comfortable in the unique sexual lifestyles.  It is not far from covering the cross to the approval of sex positive week during Lent.

The question that Hunt kept asking on his program is why Obama chose Georgetown for this speech when there were other venues in Washington.  The answer is power and arrogance.  Everytime that a secular administration of any kind shows the world how religious leaders and institutions kow-tow to that administration, they demonstrate the power of secularism over Christianity.  To Obama, he is Obama-the winner-the one the world has chosen to lead America down a “new path.”  To paraphrase T. S. Eliot, this is the way the church ends, this is the way the church ends, this is the way the church ends, “not with a bang,but a whimper.”

No Much to Learn, So Little Time

 

 

At Easter Vigil on Saturday Night, 12 April 2009, I became,as Father Tim put it, “a new Catholic.”  I must admit that the thought of becoming anything new at my age is appealing, and somewhat scary.  Anyway, after 8 months of RCIA, several interviews, a lot of soul-searching, many “I can’t buy that”s replaced by “well, since you explained that way”s, several ceremonies, and a trip to Italy (the trip wasn’t required–it just sorta happened), I took my first communion as a full member of the Catholic Church.  I looked back at a couple of my former blogs and realized just how pompous a couple of them were, and I apologize to the ones who actually read them.  I reminded myself of Tony Blair, who converted to Catholicism less than a year ago and has started lecturing the Pope about how the Catholic Church needs to get in step with “ordinary catholics” when it comes top the Church’s stance on homosexuality.  Yelp, that’s Tony, the new guy on the block, telling the Pope that he needs to change the Church.  I hope that Tony realizes how little he knows about morality, theology, and Catholic history when compared with Pope Benedict.  I have come to realize that conversion, like salvation, is an ongoing thing.  I have barely scratched the surface of the kernel of gold offered by Catholicism.  During the homily at the Easter Vigil,Father Tim asked the “new Catholics” to keep learning about the faith.  That is my new challenge–to learn about the Faith.  It has been around and has been true for a long, long time.

“Christ Is Risen, Risen Indeed.”

Venice: The Trip, The Novel, The Pictures

I had tried to read to read Michener’s The Source on the flight from Atlanta to Paris, but for some reason, I just couldn’t get into it.  So, Kathy suggested that I go buy a book during the layover that we had in Paris on the return flight.  I consequently wandered around DeGaulle airport finding the toilets, money exchangers, and a bookstore.  I was amazed that even though most of the books were in French, there was a section dedicated to English titles.  I bought two books:  The Venetian Betrayal by Steve Berry and the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, World Without End.  I started reading World Without End, and was amazed that Ken Follett could cram a three-legged dog, an eight year olf girl-thief, and a knight becoming a monk into 39 pages.  I figured that that kind of literary prowness would have to wait until I could fully appreciate it and I chose to read The Venetian Betrayal.  Now, the irony that I would spend Euros that I had converted from dollars in Georgia to buy a book written by a Georgian in Paris was not lost on me, especially since the subject of the novel, I thought, was Venice, a city I had just visited.  The novel is indeed set in Venice, partially, and many of the locales are Venetian, but I was wrong about the subject matter.  The main plot of the novel concerned the body of Alexander the Great, world conquest by germ warfare, secret medieval potions, and aids.  I will leave it to you to read the book and see how skillfully Mr. Berry weaves all these threads together.  The main thought that kept reoccurring to me as I read the book was how I was now more familiar with Venice, the canals, and the boats only transportation requirement in Venice.  I wondered if that familiarity, which I had just obtained, added to my enjoyment of the book.  I know that I read the book from cover-to-cover during the flight and enjoyed it.  This post about it also gives me the chance to post some pictures from Venice that I took while visiting there.  If Mr. Berry wants to use them as illustrations in his novel, he can always ask.

The Water Taxi-The Way to and from the Mainland

The Morning Commute in Venice - Vehicles Are Not Allowed

St. Marks' Basilica and Square in Venice

The Obligatory Gondola Ride on The Canals in Venice

The Sea and Venice

The Trip to Assisi, Italy

We climbed up the road in Assisi.  At the end of the road was a cathedral.  We all thought that the cathedral had been built to honor St. Francis of Assisi, but it hadn’t.  I had been built to honor the patron saint of Assisi, St. Rufinus, another of  those Catholic Saints of whom I had never heard.  But outside the Cathedral was a beautiful lawn with the Tau, the symbol of peace, and a statue of Saint Francis as the young soldier when he had first heard the call of God.  The effect was remarkable calming as was the effect of the cathedral and the area around it.  We stayed in a hotel overlooking the valley with gorgeous views outside the breakfast bar windows and the sound of church bells as our alarm clock.  I fell in love with the place, but I wondered how it would be to live there because the town is so hilly with narrow streets , even narrower sidewalks, and cobblestones every where.  In the town of Assisi, the stop lights control the movement of cars down one way streets, around dead-blind corners, and up hills so steep that you can’t see the next intersection over the intervening drop.  Everywhere seemed to be up-hill, even when you were going back after climbing a hill.  So, the beauty and peace would have probably worn off in a very, short while; but it didn’t while we were there.  After Mass, we shopped in the Gift Shop and would have probably bought more, but we thought that the Vatican Shop would have more.  It didn’t.  In fact, the Vatican store was a real disappointment.  I wished that we would have spent more time in Assisi, but I didn’t design the trip.  In too short a time, we were gone –this time down the hill into the surrounding valley.  After reading some of the blogs written by others who have visited Assiss, I believe that we were really lucky to be there at a time when there were so few visitors.  Maybe, the request for blessing that the priests offered at the beginning of the trip worked after all.

Assisi, Italy

A View from the Town Square in Assisi

St. Francis When He received the Call from God