HOW GOD BRINGS GOOD OUT OF EVIL (Letter to Dompost, November 19)

I notice that when I email the Dompost, specially on the subject of Christianity, and my letter fails to appear, very often the dear old Dom will print another letter on the same topic, but one that is less challenging mentally and suitably anodyne.

After I'd sent the following missive, not one but two letters of that nature appeared. Letters that would upset no one.

So read on:


As an ‘off-putting, smug’ Catholic I say thank you Rosemary McLeod, for reminding us how God brings good out of evil.

Out of the Crusades, the revelation to Islam of a faith which declares that ‘each human life has value’. Out of the the Inquisition, a resolve to atone and never repeat it. Out of Spain’s conquest of South America, breathtakingly beautiful cathedrals where millions of tourists go for a glimpse of heaven.

And out of Isis, the realisation that while most of us Christians try but fail, the Mother Teresas and Vincent de Pauls and Mother Mary Auberts illumine our darkness with the light of Christ, living like he did, for the good of others.

GRADUATING FROM MEDITATION (Letter to Dompost, November 25)

So keeping my comments on the previous post, on my letters on Christianity, in mind, we can expect someone else's opinions on meditation to appear in the Dompost columns shortly.

Read on:


‘Meditation can help you thrive’, says Dr Libby (November 24), and she’s right. In adding ‘even spiritually’, she hints at benefits which with the right guidance will lead you to indescribable delight.

Graduating from meditation, in which you do all the work – and as Dr Libby says, it’s hard – you arrive at contemplation, where God takes over and gradually transforms you. Along with all the benefits Dr Libby mentions, ‘unhelpful emotions’ disappear.

No one who truly follows the Christian contemplative tradition has any no trouble sticking with it. They find they can’t live without it.

ABANDONING MY POST (S) TO BE A PILGRIM (First published in 'NZ Catholic, October 18)

 

 

I apologise to all my readers for abandoning my post (or rather, posts) at Carmelite Canto Fermo for two months - and more.

As I explain in the following NZ Catholic column, I was in Spain.  I made a pilgrimage to Avila for the 500^th centenary of St Teresa of Jesus, and pilgrims don't have time to post ...

 

So read on:

 

 

European holidays are for people with family there. Or so I thought. Actually, after our OE eighteen years ago with 4 year-old Rosanagh I thought, never again.

It was always my dream to go to France. And we did. We drove straight through France, at speed, at the height of summer, with ‘im indoors’ brother and his wife from Basingstoke in their two-door BMW. They’d been to France before. They wanted to go to Italy and I, in the grip of post-natal depression, incapable of making plans, went along for the ride.

It wasn’t until years later that I discovered Spain, or more specifically, the woman Spaniards revere as La Santa. From Primer One I’d heard the ‘black Joes’ lauding the Carmelites as the crème de la crème of religious orders and eventually - those humble Sisters of St Joseph of Nazareth having wisely not invited me to join them - I became a lay Carmelite.

Then last November I opened an email announcing a pilgrimage to Spain for St Teresa of Avila’s 500^th anniversary celebrations. Without thinking I flicked it to ‘im indoors, who’s always thinking and always Scottish. ‘It’s very reasonable,’ he said. ‘You should go.’

‘Not without you,’ I said, and before bob was our uncle we were booked for Spain.

Then at a family wedding a relly who’d nearly died on OE in London told me I was being ‘a bit selfish’. He was probably thinking of the airfreight for a coffin. But at the same wedding was our Melbourne son, a health and fitness Nazi who brought his father up to speed on the latest diet, and ‘im indoors started fasting two days a week. (I’d been doing that for years, but never mind.)

Then a long-lost friend surfaced on the net with pix of his new house in Buendia, Cuenca, and said he’d meet us at Madrid airport.

After two knee replacements ‘im indoors was wont to say his doctor had forbidden him to walk, don’t y’ know, but as his weight dropped his legs started working. Now friends say he’s a shadow of his former self and he’s walking the distance from a monastery bed to the plaza de la cuidad.

We booked house sitters. Bosy and Orlando sitters, really. The dog and cat being elderly, ‘im indoors thought they could die before we left, but even so I’d rather not come home to swallows and starlings in the roof tiles. And the prospect of house sitters had a startling effect - while ‘im indoors planned and packed, I furiously spring-cleaned. In winter.

I should be writingl this in the third person. When Teresa wrote (only under obedience, while I’m just showing off) of her experiences, she’d say, ‘I know someone who …’. That’s humility. If I did that I’d sound coy. Anyway, no one would believe me.

It hurt, leaving our family. But with everything falling into place so sweetly, I’m convinced it was God’s will that we should go to Spain.

 

ALTAR GIRLS A TROJAN HORSE FOR WOMEN PRIESTS? (First published in 'NZ Catholic' September 19 - or thereabouts)

                Some of the questions which must occur spontaneously to many Catholics, I’m guessing, are questions to which we all know the obvious answers.

Like when the Vatican says boy altar servers are ‘very appropriate’ but only ‘permits’ girl altar servers, why are there more girls in the sanctuary than boys? Because girls can do anything. Preferring boys to girls is sexist. Girls provide gender balance. Girls like it more than boys. They do it better.

But wait on. If/when you were a boy, would you want to get dressed with a bunch of girls in long frocks and parade into church together all dressed the same? When they were worn only by boys, servers’ robes were seen as masculine like priests’ robes were, and still are in the Catholic Church. Now altar boys have to wear the same gear as their sisters, it has to be sissy.

Girls can’t ‘do anything’. They can’t become priests and as the Vatican has acknowledged, altar serving leads to priestly vocations. What’s the introduction of girl altar servers done for priestly vocations in Aotearoa New Zealand? Warning against false prophets, Jesus said ‘By their fruits you shall know them’ (Mt 7.16). Think about that.

Boys can’t ‘do anything’, either. They can’t become mothers. Should we say God is sexist then, because he prefers girls as future mothers and boys as future priests? Which role is more important, when the former produce the latter?

Girls like altar serving more than boys do because they like dressing up and obeying instructions and parading more than boys do, and that’s why they do it better. Which only makes it worse for the boys.

Where was the ‘gender balance’ at the Last Supper? Not even Mary was present.  Her role was different, more exalted than the apostles’ – because she was more humble.

‘Ah’, as Teresa of Avila cries, ‘humility’! Where there’s no humility there’s no love of God or neighbour, no charity. Vocations are lacking because humility is lacking, because the priesthood must be lived out of love propter Deum: love of others because of love of God.

One could be excused for thinking altar girls are a Trojan horse for women priests. That wouldn’t be the prime motivator, but we have to realise there are forces at work which are beyond our immediate control or understanding. For one thing, we are attached to our ideals of sexual equality, and attachments are a handy vehicle for the devil to drive.

The Holy See recommends that as far as possible, the custom of having only boys as servers be retained, that if a bishop has special reasons for permitting girl servers his decision must be clearly explained, that his priests are not required to use them in an act of worship in which no one has any inherent rights. That sounds to me like an attempt to shut the stable doors after the horse of girl altar servers had bolted. Like Communion in the hand, it’s born out of dissent and disobedience (Innocent IV and Benedict XIV) – ‘an exercise in charity’. 71% of US priests served as altar boys. It’s not rocket science. The recent trend has been to relax (weaken) law and doctrine (communion in the hand). Countries with flourishing priestly vocations generally do not have female altar servers.lysih: igrXo h

The only diocese in the US not allowing girls as servers is Lincoln Nebraska, where very few Catholic families have asked for the privilege. The reason? Wait for it. The diocese focuses from a young age on ‘the serious vocation of laity to full … participation in the Mass through contemplation, thanksgiving and adoration’ (my emphasis).

In the end I think we must accept that all the reasons advanced for girl altar servers are prompted by an influence beyond human reason.