All Saints Eve 2008

"After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb." ~Revelation 7

DH Lawrence on "the great ordering"

I've been at Lucy Beckett's In The Light of Christ again--this time the chapter on the British writers from DH Lawrence to Saul Bellow. While writers like Joseph Conrad, Henry James, and Lawrence have never held much attraction for my little heart, she manages to frame them within a compelling narrative--the drama of Western culture's slow slide into the post-Christian.

But there is a real beauty in and of itself to Lawrence's prose. Here is his description of Tom Brangwen's "almost pre-Christian" and certainly pre-theological faith in God. From The Rainbow:

"During the long February nights with the ewes in labour, looking out from the shelter into the flashing stars, he knew he did not belong to himself. He must admit that he was only fragmentary, something incomplete and subject. There were the stars, in the dark heaven travelling, the whole host passing by on some eternal voyage. So he sat, small and submissive in the great ordering."

A time to die.

"Only the person who renounces self-importance, who no longer struggles to defend or assert himself, can be large enough for God's boundless action."

--St. Edith Stein

The King's Good Servant

I've just finished a re-read of James Monti's The King's Good Servant But God's First--really the most excellent biography of Thomas More I have read as well as a beautiful history of the Protestant "Reformation."

Thomas More is a man for our season: the right balance of muscular Catholicism with deep humility, masculine fortitude with a childlike dependence on God, loyalty to king and devotion to the Church, the ability to see clearly the "first things," and an irrepressible merriment that--counter-intuitively enough--arose directly from his preoccupation with the Last Things.

Here is Monti (and More himself) on More's trial. The jury has just found him guilty of high treason and "malicious bent." Before sentence is passed, More speaks plainly his conviction of the relationship between God's justice and the justice of Parliament. Listen carefully.

"The time had come for him to give the conscience of his country a living voice--a voice that would shake the rafters of Westminster Hall:

'...Forasmuch as this Indictment is grounded upon an Act of Parliament directly repugnant to the laws of God and his Holy Church, the supreme Government of which, or of any part whereof, may no temporal Prince presume by any law to take upon him, as rightfully belonging to the See of Rome, a spiritual pre-eminence by the mouth of our Saviour himself, personally present here on earth, only to St. Peter and his successors, Bishops of the same See, by special prerogative granted; it is therefore in law, amongst Christian men, insuffcient to charge any Christian man.'"

Let's unpack that a little.

More asserts that no temporal power, be it Congress or Parliament or a dictator, has the authority to make any "ecclesiastical" law in opposition to Rome. In other words, government cannot dictate matters of doctrine or morals; if it does, its laws are not binding on the conscience of men. Matters of faith and morals can only be decided by Christ himself, who gave that authority to Peter, his successors, and those in direct communion with them.

Then, the presiding judge challenges More, saying that "his obstinact and 'vehemnt' words against the Treasons Act were much to be marveled at, in virtue of the fact that he stood alone in his views against all England's 'Bishops, Universities, and best learned men.' There was lurking in this statement a non sequitur that so many learned men could not possibly be wrong."

More counters by appealing to a much more universal consensus:

"If the number of Bishops and universities be so material as your lordship seemeth to take it, then see I little cause, my lord, why that thing in my conscience should make any change. For I nothing doubt but that, though not in this realm, yet in Christendom about, of these well learned Bishops and virtuous men that are yet alive, they be not the fewer part that be of my mind therein. But if I should speak of those which already be dead, of whom many be now holy saints in heaven, I am very sure it is the far greater part of them that, all the while they lived, thought in this case that way that I think now. And threfore am I not bound, my lord, to conform my conscience to the Council of one Realm against the general Council of Christendom. For of the aforesaid holy Bishops I have for every Bishop of yours, above one hundred, and for one Council or Parliament of yours, I have all the Councils made these thousand years."

Hot diggity. The conscience of the Catholic is bound and beholden, not to the precedents of its nation's courts or to its laws and systems, but rather to the mind of Christ on earth: the Councils of his apostles, the constant teaching of their doctors. His hope is in heaven, not in some imminent eschatology.



Three more points on More's seasonability:

1. He died not only because he would not put a king before Christ's vicar, but also because of a "social teaching": the inviolability of marriage.

2. It was only because he put the authority of his king in its proper place--and he never denied the king's power to put him to death!--that he was in fact "the king's good servant." Had he placed the king above the pope, the king himself would have suffered.

3. He was terribly merry about the whole thing. He was a jolly martyr because, after all, the affairs of state are small things in light of eternity.

November approacheth.

And November is Dead Poets Month.

I have nothing against living poets; but since there are so very many dead poets and since November is the month to remember the dead, November is Dead Poets Month.

So, if you have any dead poets you'd like to hear from, let me know and I'll work him or her in. Starting on November 1 with my annual GK Chesterton sample, we'll enjoy some of the Good and the True through the medium of the Beautiful. It will sooth our souls in the election drama.

The Second Child

Poor Isabella. Today alone, she has been tossed on the waves of Miriam's whim over four times. In order, she has been:

Piglet.

Hen.

Babbity Bumble.


















and the Baronness.
.

Here's what she thinks about that.

More from Paul VI

The following is from Paul VI's letter to his brother, Ludovico, just prior to his marriage. It is appropriate following all our thoughts about abortion, to dwell on the beauty of human life--a beauty that finds its source only in divine life.

"Dear Lodovico,

You are now the heart of our household, and the two months yet to elapse before your marriage arouse in us all the tremor of anticipation and goes with life-making events. Looking at it selfishly, I can say that the happiness of the family now depends on you, for it is in you that the family is renewed and starts again. We who stand on the touchline are glad you are happy. You know that being happy is a difficult business. But the Lord has made it easier for you by giving you the lessons taught so simply and sublimely by our parents - the joy of love, that is, of understanding and being understood, of giving and receiving, of sacrificing oneself to be recreated, of pouring out treasures of one's own heart only to find them multiplied endlessly.

You have the blessing of having found a lovely woman, privileged and - you know better than I - unique. Having found a precious pearl, see to it that your soul is vested in a new personality; just think that now you are sealing for ever the means and the measure by which for your entire life you will communicate with another spirit in the mutual quest for human life (vita humana) and divine life. Mark well the providential design nature has implanted in you in this time of waiting, gentleness, self-giving, energy, generosity, abiding patience and immense desires. Use the plasticity of your soul in this period to create in yourself a new man, a new character, a new goodness, a new strength, and a new style as you seek the ideal offered by the Companion you await. Lay in a stock of love, yes indeed, for life is long and difficult, like winter, and the nest must always be warm and protected. Maybe in God's mind you have a sovereign right to expect that your marriage will grow and prosper. This is the grace I ask for you.

Farewell, Battista"