God Save the Queen!

I have always been fascinated with kings and queens. Perhaps this is because my name, from the Gaelic for "Little King", has given occasion to reflect on my vocation, which is every person's vocation, to be an image of the "Great King", Jesus Christ.

In this country, where we have never had a monarchy and have fought a Revolution against the government of a corrupt monarch, we tend to be suspicious of monarchy. And there is good cause for suspicion. Even as the people of Israel clamored for a king, the Lord warned:

These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots [...] He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your menservants and maidservants, and the best of your cattle and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. (1 Sam 8:11, 13-17)

This is the Lord's own warning about kings: They will take, and take, and take. Surely there have been bad kings and queens throughout history, perhaps even more bad than good. But then Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, provides the model for true kingship: not to take and take and take, but to give and give and give. "For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mar 10:45).

Something of this divine model of benevolent service was echoed on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II's succession to the Throne of England. On that occasion, the Queen said, "I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong." Notice that the Queen speaks of her reign as a service, and not merely in the cold terms of law and duty, but of familial affection.

This year, Queen Elizabeth celebrates her Diamond Jubilee, only the second monarch in British history to do so (Queen Victoria was the first). Reflecting upon her 60 year reign, I cannot help but be impressed by such a distinguished service, in an office which is so often susceptible to corruption. And there are few who would disagree--even many an anti-monarchist--that her service has been distinguished by wisdom, strength, and grace. For Elizabeth was never meant to be Queen; her uncle abdicated the Throne, and her father, who succeeded him, died young. At the breathtaking age of 26, she accepted her destiny with dignity and resolve, which has remained unabated in the ensuing 60 years.

Queen Elizabeth II is a model for us all of a life dedicated to service, and so I proudly say,

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!

Candlemas, Saint Brigid, and the Light of True Faith

Today, the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, known in English-speaking countries as "Candlemas" for the tradition of blessing candles on this day. Yesterday, she celebrated the Feast of Saint Brigid of Kildare, one of the patrons of Ireland. These two feasts, which occur within a day of each other, speak to the great Christian theme of meeting and parting, of assimilation and rejection, in short, of Incarnation.

Last October, I wrote of the pagan origins of All Saints' Day in the Irish harvest festival of Samhain. I wrote of how the Church affirms and assimilates all that is good and true and beautiful in every culture with which it comes into contact. But if this principal, called "inculturation" be true, it necessarily posits a corollary: the Church emphatically rejects all that is not good and true and beautiful in a culture.

Thus, even as the the Christian missionaries to Ireland affirmed the people's veneration for motherhood and fertility in the cult of the goddess Brigid, they insisted that there is only one God, not many, and He is not a mother, but the Creator of motherhood. It is appropriate, therefore, that Saint Brigid, foundress of one of Ireland's most ancient monasteries, shares a name with the old goddess. For Brigid was a mother to the community of which she was abbess, having influence over even bishops and chieftains, a patroness of literature and the arts, and a revered spiritual teacher. It is also appropriate that her feast (February 1) falls on the same day as the festival of the old goddess (Imbolc), for the cult of the saint replaces that of the goddess; the shadows of superstition are replaced by the pure light of Faith. Brigid, like all the great saints, is a light that points beyond herself to a higher Light.

This Light is the "light to the nations" (Luke 2:32) that the prophet Simeon greeted in the Temple. This Light is the Son of God who became like man in all things, except sin. Here again, in the person of Jesus Christ, we see the theme of assimilation and rejection. For Christ, possessive of a divine nature, takes upon Himself a human nature. He assimilates everything that is good and true and beautiful in human nature, while emphatically rejecting that which is not, namely sin.

So let us not confuse true religion with false religion, as if it were all-of-a-piece. There are many points of contact between Christianity and the many cults of the world, and these should be celebrated. But when God becomes man in the person of Jesus Christ, something occurs that is genuinely new and unique in the history of mankind. And this Jesus Christ compels a choice; He "calls us out of darkness and into his own marvelous light" (1 Pet 2:9).

St. Brigid of Kildare, show us the light of true Faith!

The Sexy Religion

Since the popularization of Blessed John Paul's "Theology of the Body" and the attendant proliferation of talks and study guides attempting to unpack it, there have been endless debates among intelligent, well-meaning Catholics about "how far is too far" when it comes to the goodness of sexual pleasure within marriage, and the appropriateness of sexual language and imagery in the spiritual life. Most recently, Catholic blogger Heather King, author of "Shirt of Flame", which is syndicated by Fr. Robert Barron's "Word on Fire" blog, has received no small amount of criticism regarding her latest piece, "The Yes of Erotic Catholicism". I encourage all to read the piece themselves, as well as the comments to it. I offer my own thoughts here.

I have long suspected that the subtle poison of puritanism has found its way into the Body of Christ, a suspicion that has been confirmed by the emphatic rejection of any kind of sexual language or imagery as applying to the spiritual life. This attitude seems to be that the spiritual life, one's relationship with God, is holy and pure, and sensual pleasure is somehow less so. Further, the suggestion that a clear analogy obtains between the spiritual union of God and Man and the corporeal union--even orgasm--of sex is at best suspect, at worst positively dangerous. But whence does this attitude come? More to the point, is it consistent with traditional Catholic teaching regarding human sexuality and the spiritual life?

As to the provenance of this attitude, one can only speculate. Let us suppose that the anti-erotic party are an intelligent, psychologically well adjusted, well meaning lot (and a cursory glance at the "Comments" box below King's post suggests that they are). Precluding any deficiency in these areas, one can only say that, somehow, the prohibitions of the Catholic sexual ethic ("Thou shalt not commit adultery [or] covet") have so superseded its prescriptions ("Be fruitful and multiply") as to obscure them altogether. And this attitude we call puritanism.

This poses a problem in that in Scripture the prescription, the "Yes", precedes the prohibition, the "No", and is in service to it. God made Man in His own image, to be a communion of persons whose physical and spiritual union participates in the generative power of God Himself. Only much later does God give to Moses the Law by which Man is to live in accord with the divine will. But to suggest that "the chill bonds of law and duty and custom" (to use Waugh's phrase) is the beginning and end of the Church's sexual ethic is to tell only half of the story.

Perhaps more to the point, ours is a tradition that celebrates, within the limits of temperance and prudence, human sexuality, and the erotic generally. The Song of Songs proposes the intensely erotic love between King Solomon and his young bride as an apt metaphor for the love of God and His people, and the prophet Hosea recounts God's heartbreak when Israel is unfaithful to its divine espousal. The Church's rich literary and artistic tradition, too, is full of erotic imagery and language, from Bernini's sculpture "The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa" to Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem "Pied Beauty". Even the Liturgy is sexually suggestive, as every Easter Vigil the Pascal candle is repeatedly plunged into the Baptismal font, the "womb of the Church". Blessed John Paul has stated that a husband and wife are most fully an icon of the Trinity when they are sexually intimate.

To be absolutely clear, nobody is suggesting that God's relationship to the individual consists in explicit genital stimulation, as in the old Greek myths and fertility cults; that is quite obviously a perversion. Rather, we are made in the image and likeness of God, the God who became Man in the person of Jesus Christ, who entered into the fullness of human experience, including human sexuality. Our Church therefore celebrates erotic love, even as she struggles to keep that love pure, holy, and life-giving.

Why I Love Religion: Jesus

By now, you've all seen it: the Youtube sensation, "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus". But for those of you who might have been living under a rock, I've added the video to this post. Here are my objections, in brief.

The mistake here is to put off sin, individual and collective, on "religion", that is to say, the institutional Church. This of course feeds into the popular notion that one can have "faith without religion". But for a human being, an "embodied spirit" to use Aquinas' phrase, faith without religion is not only imprudent; it is simply impossible. Faith is a matter of the heart, indeed, but that faith is lived out in the practical, the particular, the nitty-gritty of human communities. And this we call religion.

Regarding the critique of "religion", framed in rhyming couplets and a groovy beat, there can be no doubt that individuals within the Church are frequently unkind, incompetent, and stupid. The sins of the Church, from the Crusades to the child sexual abuse scandal, have been rehearsed over and over again, and repeatedly invoked to refute the claims of the Church. Now I make no excuse for these things; they are deplorable. But to say that the Church's claims are untrue because individuals within it have done bad things is simply fallacious. If I kick you in the shin and say the earth is round, it is fallacious to say the earth is flat because I kicked you in the shin.

Perhaps more to the point, faith without religion was not what Christ desired for His Church. Scripture is quite clear here: Jesus chose twelve apostles, with Peter at the head, whom He sent out with the commission to teach and baptize, "making disciples of all nations" (Mat 28:19-20). He gave these men the Holy Spirit to "guide [them] into all the truth" (Jhn 16:13) and told them, "Whoever receives you, receives me" (Mat 10:40). So according to Jesus' own words, there is no getting to Him but through the Church that He Himself built, upon the Rock of Peter (cf. Mat 16:18-19).