St. Meinrad Soccer Tourney

 Well, here are a few photos from the recent soccer tournament hosted by St. Meinrad seminary...the Josephinum won the tournament (the last photo is proof).

I have been reading quite a bit of Chesterton lately, and since i need some typing practice, and because i think this chapter from Gilbert's The Thing: Why I am Catholic is particularly hilarious, and also because  most of us can sympathize with him regarding our relatives and friends, i'm going to type it out. (footnotes are in parenthesis).

Chapter IX

WHAT DO THEY THINK?

All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story.  Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.  The Catholic Church remains in the best sense a mystery even to believers.  It would be foolish of them to complain if it is a riddle to unbelievers.  But in a more practical sense we may well ask a question.  What do they think it really is?  What do they think we think it really is?  What do they think it is all about, or even supposed to be all about?  That problem becomes darker and darker for me, the more I stare at it.  It becomes black as midnight, for instance, when I stare at such a sentence as I saw recently in Truth, a singularly intelligent and often a highly valuable paper.  It stated that Rome tolerates, in her relation with the Russian Uniats (1), "strange heresies and even bearded and wedded clergy."

In that one extraordinary phrase, what formless monster begins to take form in their visions?  In those eight words it is not too much to say that every term is startling in its inconsequence.  As somebody tumbling down the stairs bumps upon every step, the writer comes a crash upon every word.  The word "strange" is strange enough.  The word "heresy" is stranger.  Perhaps at first sight the word "bearded," with its joyous reminiscences of the game Beaver, may appear the most funny.  "Wedded" is also funny. Even the "and" between bearded and wedded is funny.  But by far the funniest and most fantastic thing in all that fantastic sentence is the word "even."

It is not everybody who can thus bestrew a page with comic conjunctions and farcical particles of speech.  Only a wild unreason, about the whole way the thing hangs together, could thus make even the joints and hinges of that rickety statement rattle and creak with laughter.  We can hardly say of this version of the Roman Catholic faith that it is a false version, or that it differs from the true version, or even that it differs from our version.  What is the version; and how can it be even their version?  There is in the world, they would tell us, a powerful and persecuting superstition, intoxicated with the impious idea of having a monopoly of divine truth, and therefore cruelly crushing and exterminating everything else as error.  It burns thinkers for thinking, discoverers for discovering, philosophers and theologians who differ by a hair's breadth from its dogmas; it will tolerate no tiny change or shadow of variety even among its friends and followers;  it sweeps the whole world with one encyclical cyclone of uniformity; it would destroy nations and empires for a word, so wedded is it to its fixed idea that its own word is the Word of God.  When it is thus sweeping the world, it comes to a remote and rather barbarous region somewhere on the borders of Russa; where it stops suddenly; smiles broadly; and tells the people there that they can have the strangest heresies they like.  Strange heresies, by the standard of strangeness likely to exist in an experience so long as that of the Roman Church, may well be very strange indeed.  The Church is no stranger to heresies that involved human sacrifice, or the worship of demons, or the practice of perversions.  We might well suppose, therefore, that the Church says benevolently to these fortunate Slavs, "By all means worship Baphomet and Beelzebub; say the Lord's Prayer backwards; continue to drink the blood of infants---nay, even," and here her voice falters, till she rallies with an effort of generous resolution, "---yes, even , if you really must, grow a beard." And then , I suppose, we must call up yet darker and more dreadful visions, of the heretic hiding himself in secret places, in caverns of witchcraft or sealed gardens of black magic, while the blasphemous beard is grown.  Nobody explains why these particular Eastern Europeans should be regarded with so much favour, or why a number of long hairs on the chin should be regarded with so much disfavour.  It is presumably a problem on which this intolerant spiritual tyranny will suffer no question to be asked. 

Does the reader realize the depair that falls upon the hapless Catholic journalist at such moments; or how wild a prayer he may well send up for the intercession of St. Francis de Sales (2)" What is he to say; or at what end of that sentence is he to begin?  What is the good of his laboriously beginning to explain that a married clergy is a matter of discipline and not doctrine, that it can therefore be allowed locally without heresy---when all the time the man thinks a beard as important as a wife and more important than a false religion?  What is the sense of explaining to him the peculiar historical circumstances that have led to preserving some local habits in Kiev or Warsaw, when the man at any moment may receive a mortal shock by seeing a bearded Franciscan walking through Wimbledon or Walham Green?  What we want to get at is the mind of the man who can think so absurdly about us as to suppose we could have a horror of heresy, and then a weakness for heresy, and then a greater horror of hair.  To what does he attribute all the inconsistent nonsense and inconsequent bathos that he associates with us?  Does he think we are all joking; or all dreaming; or all out of our minds; or what does he think?  Until we have got at that, we have really got very little futher.

The notion that he merely thinks the Church is all nonsense is not very consistent with the way in which he talks about her in other aspects; as when he says she has always resisted such and such changes, which he perhaps approves; or that she can be counted on as an influence for such and such principles, which he perhaps dislikes; or that she is forbidden to accept this doctrine or committed to defending that.  But what he can possibly suppose to be the principle upon which she accepts or rejects doctrines I never can imagine.  And the more we really come in contact with the puzzle, the more we shall feel, I think, something quite unique and evey creepy about it.  It is like the old fable of the five blind men who tried to explore an elephant; a fable that used to be told as a sort of farce; but which I can well imagine being told by Maeterlinck (3) or some modern mystic so as to make the flesh creep with mysteries.  The thing is at once so obvious and so invisible; so public and so impalpable; so universal and so secret. They say so much about it; and they say so little.  They see so much of it; and they see so little.  There is a sort of colossal contradiction, such as can only be conceived between different dimensions or different planes of thought, in the co-existence of such familiar fact and such utterly unknown truth.  Indeed, there is only one combination of words I know of, which ever did exactly express so huge a human and historical paradox; and they also are familiar and unfathomable: "The light shone in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not." (4)

Some part of the difficulty is doubtless due to the odd way in which so many people are at once preoccupied with it and prejudiced against it.  It is queer to observe so much ignorance with so little indifference.  They love talking about it and they hate hearing about it.  It would seem that they especially hate asking about it.  If, for instance, a man contributing to Truth, in the middle of educated London, really were a little puzzled by Rome making an exception to the celibacy of the clergy (I omit his dark and inscrutable broodings on the subject of Beavers) might it not have occurred to him to go and ask some Catholic priest, or for that matter, some Catholic layman, and thus gain some sort of rough idea of the relative importance attached in our system to celibacy and heresy and hair on the face?  Could he not have gained a glimpse of the usual order of hierarchy of these ideas, which would have prevented him from writing the staggering word "and" or the stunning word "even"? But I am inclined to suspect that even this omission, negative as it may seem, has in it something deeper than mere negligence.  I fancy that there is more than meets the eye in this curious controversial attitute; the desire to ask rhetorical questions and not to ask real question; the wish to heckle and not to hear.  It may well be connected with more mystical aspects of the whole question, on which I am certainly not going to speculate, since they are admittedly the most subtle problems of the trained theologian; all those questions about the will to believe and the operations of grace; and the fact that something more than reason is needed to bring any of us into the most reasonable of all philosophies.

But apart from these mysteries, i think there is another reason that is human and historical.  The thing that causes Catholic philosophy to be neglected is the very thing that really makes it impossible to neglect.  It is the fact that it was something left for dead; and now rather incredibly come to life.  An ordinary man would not mind very much whether he knew the exact ritual with which Roman augurs examined the entrails of beasts or watched the movements of birds; because he is certain that the world will not go back to that Roman religion.  the world was once almost as certain that it would not go back to this other Roman religion.  A man would not be very much ashamed of having put the metals in the wrong order in the imaginary formula of an alchemist, described in a historical romance; because he is convinced that alchemists can only return in romance and can never return in history.  There was a time when he felt quite as safe about abbots as about alchemists.  That time has already passed.  That mere confident contempt, as I have said, has already been succeeded by a rather restless curiosity.  But mental habits overlap; and the dead momentum of the old disregard of facts goes along side by side with a new movement of anxiety about possibilities.  They would not be so ignorant about it if they had not decided that it was dead.  They would not be so irritated about it if they had not discovered that it was alive.  For ignorance accumulates like knowledge; and these newly aroused critics are the inheritors of the accruing interest of four hundred years of an ignorance that became an indifference.  At this moment they are no longer indifferent; but they are still ignorant.  They have been awakened suddely in the watches of the night, and what they see they can neither deny nor understand.  For they see one that was dead walking; and the blaze of that living death blasts or obliterates all the older details of life; and all the fables they have believed and all the facts they have forgotten are alike swallowed up in the miracle they can neither believe nor forget.  

(1) Russian Uniates are Eastern-rite Catholics loyal to the papacy.

(2) St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) was bishop of Geneva and the patron saint of journalists.

(3) Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) was a Belgian Symbolist playwright.

(4) John 1:5

----------------------------------------------------

Man, I love reading Chesterton. 

Home

Well, i figured it was about time i put an update on here for all interested parties.  I have now been at the Josephinum for a week, and it appears that i will be here for the next 7 years, so i am trying to get accustomed to the fact that this is my new home.  That is, of course, not too difficult to do.  Things here are great.  Other than it being ridiculously muggy here and there being no air conditioning, i have no complaints.   

Today is our first day of classes and all of last week we were ushered from meeting to meeting to everything you can imagine in order to 'orient' us to seminary life.  This is my first seminary experience so i don't have anything to compare it to, but from what i understand from my fellow seminarians, the Josephinum is a little more disciplined than most other seminaries.  We are required to wear collared shirts, slacks, and dress shoes to all of our classes and prayers and masses during the week, unless we're working out or something.  The evenings we are allowed casual dress.  For Sunday mass we are required to wear a suit and tie. We are not forbidden from going off the grounds, but to be honest there isn't much time (and in my case money) for such outings. 

I live in the Theologate (with all the guys in major seminary, including the 4th year guys who are all ordained deacons), and am required to attend the Theologate's horarium (liturgy of the hours schedule) and mass schedule.  In keeping with JPII's Pastores Dabo Vobis our seminary (and all seminaries ostensibly) seek to form young men in the human, intellectual, spiritual, and pastoral aspects: The so called '4-pillars'.  As part of this we are required to have a spiritual director and a separate formation director.  The spiritual director relationship is strictly confidential (and of course if the sacrament of penance is involved in the direction it is canonically bound to secrecy under church law) while the formation director relationship is an "open-forum" meaning that they meet with all the other members of the formation team on a regular basis and anything discussed with my formation director is, at least in the realm of the formation faculty, public knowledge. 

Our days are pretty well structured:

7:30 morning prayer, 8:00 breakfast, 8:30-11:15 class, 11:30 mass, 12:00 lunch, 1:00-5:10 class, 5:30 evening prayer + regina coeli/salve regina, and if you have no classes in the evening most of your time is study time.  Our pub is open from 9-11 every night except on weekends when it is open to 12.  Every wednesday mass and part of our liturgy of the hours is in spanish, one day every week mass is in latin.  The Josephinum is pretty latin-heavy.  much of our sunday masses are in latin including the creed (which we chant) and most if not all of the liturgical prayers.  We have a very accomplished music director who has been doing sacred music for a number of years and he definitely loves classically oriented/ chanted musical settings. 

There is a college seminary here as well, which is where i will be taking most of my classes.  It is a separate building, where all the college seminarians live and pray.  I will be working the next 3 years toward my bachelor's degreen in philosophy (although i don't have to declare until the spring, i don't see any point in getting a humanities degree).  Our theologate offers 3 programs...the M. Div, M.A., and S.T.B. master's degrees.  My understanding is that you only need the M.Div., but the others are encouraged, certainly if you intend on pursuing further education.  Our S.T.B. degree is new this year and is done in conjunction with the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome.  In order to fulfill the S.T.B. a 30 page thesis is required with an oral examination of it from members of the Lateran University's faculty (i suppose they fly over for the oral exam, unless the seminarian is flown to rome). 

Academics here are pretty brutal from what everyone says.  The Academic dean told us to be prepared because he has instructed all of the faculty to "throw the book at us".  I'm rather excited about the academics, and about seminary life in general.  The guys here are great.  They come from all over the U.S.  and we have several international students as well, so there is a good mix of men.  Anyway, i must end here as i have to go meet with my spiritual director now.  Keep me in your prayers!

On The Brink...

Well, I have one week left until i leave for seminary.  There are probably only a handful of times in one's life when they truly begin on something new, something fresh.  For me, this is such a time...at least in the sense that I am forsaking the well beaten path of marriage and children or hedonistic singlehood for something....well, better.  Why is it better, you ask?  Because it is more Christ-like.  Because it is not about what "I" want, but what Our Father in heaven wants.  Because it is a vocation that stresses perhaps more visibly the otherworldliness of the human condition, of humanity, or as i would state it, the soul.  Because it is a daily struggle to unify ourselves with Christ crucified. 

---Gee, Terry, that sounds serious.  

It is. 

So serious that i'm not sure so called happiness for me in this life could be attained in any other way.  As i see it, happiness is the knowledge that one is doing God's will...this is what satisfies the soul.  This in fact, is the only thing that satisfies the soul.  It is the one true path to Joy. (How many men and women do we pass on a daily basis who deny the existence of their own soul?  Who, even if they do somewhere in their mind have an idea that they are eternal, nonetheless act as if the eminent moment is the only reality that they are willing to act on.)

But i digress...the point here is that for once in my life I am able to wake up in the morning and say honestly to myself "God has a purpose for me in this life and I'm doing the best i can to fulfill that purpose". 

---But Terry, that's quite presumptive of you isn't it?  To say that you know God's will?

Perhaps. 

But, I believe very firmly in the presence of the Holy Spirit, and in his guidance.  Were that not the case, i would be utterly helpless in the everyday decisions i make.  I would be even more helpless in the big decisions (like this) which must be made in life.  Thank you Lord, for being the Comforter, the Paraclete.  Let me always do my very best to walk daily with You, to never turn my back on You... You who Were in the beginning, Are now, and ever shall Be.  Amen.

The religion of International Football

Now, I am a Christian.  Let me begin there...  My faith is in the Incarnated Son of God, his suffering, death, and resurrection, and in the Church which he founded upon the Apostles, under the primacy of Peter.  That is my Religion, if one were to ask.  It is God that i thank for my existence, that i praise for his mercy and righteousness and infinite love.  When i think of Passion, i think immediately of Christ.  But.....every once in a while when i hear passion i think of the World Cup.  I had the good fortune of being in Orlando in the summer of 1994 to meet some of my cousins who had come over from Ireland to support their country's national team in the World Cup.  I remember going to a little sports bar with them one night in Orlando, and i was enchanted by what i saw.  Men and women from all over the world were there, wearing the colors of their country, some on their shirts, some on their faces, but all in their hearts.  It was the first time i had ever witnessed people truly celebrating their nationality.  It was so much more than an american flag flying on the back of a truck... there was no pretense among any of the people, there was no sense that a particular country was any better than another---there was only the atmosphere that everyone was from somewhere, everyone was there to celebrate something.  In the end, it was a celebration of diversity, it was truly a celebration of the World.  To a 12 year old, it was religion at its purest.

It was around that same time that i began to question my 'membership' in the Church of the Nazarene.  I began to wonder, after having seen the great diversity of people in the world, how that little church i attended on the outskirts of an old industrialized town in rural Tennessee could lay any claim to The Truth.  Or, at least, any more of a claim than the church next door (which was, ironically, a Catholic church....), or the Assembly of God church down the street, or the Baptist church up on main street, or the Episcopal church on Chestnut St., or perhaps even more importantly, how we Christians could claim to have more truth than the Muslim or the Buddhist, or the tribal African.   I would come to find out, years later, where all those claims of Truth came from--- i would rediscover Christ as being the way, the truth, and the life.  But he only made sense to me as the Catholic Christ.  That is, the Christ who was in all nations for all humanity, to be all things to all men.  Where once i had seen the divisions among protestant Churches as a stumbling block toward my faith in Christ, i eventually turned to see the unity of the Holy Catholic Church as a testament to the presence of Christ.  Luckily, i was not disappointed ...for Christ truly was, and is, bodily present in every Catholic Church i have ever had the privilege of visiting.  It pains me to admit that i cannot say the same about our separated brethren in the protestant churches.  I go to those churches and i cannot find Christ in a tabernacle or even symbolically on a cross.  I cannot find him in their lack of communion with their fellow separated brethren, and sometimes i cannot even find him in the communion between their own members.  Obviously, the Catholic Church is not perfect, so let me reiterate that lest anyone say that i wear rose-colored glasses.  If it were perfect, it would be of no use to me, because it would never understand my imperfection, or be able to guide me on the path toward perfection, which is full communion with Our Lord, a communion which we see in this world only through a mirror dimly, but which we shall see in the life to come face to face.

Ok, sorry about the tangent, i'll put my pulpit away and return to the world of football (or soccer if you are that americanized), because i shall never get to the point if i don't.  The World Cup is the pinnacle of sport. That is a fact and anyone who attempts to lay another claim upon that title is a heretic of mankind,  or else a dolt and a fool.  I say that with confidence because the testament of the world stands behind me.  Ghana, Togo, and the Ivory Coast are some of the most destitute countries in the world.  The Ivory Coast especially, which has been caught in a vicious civil war for years, with the U.N. dancing on the outskirts, unable to make heads or tails of the situation.  But over the past year, that country, which has been so bitterly divided, has risen up and proclaimed their nationhood in a unanimous way...through a simple little sport with one ball and two goals.  The national team's football players have become spokesmen of peace and unity.  In the midst of the chaos of their country, the children have been given heroes, the men and women have been given the hope of an end to war, and to all has been given the belief, even if it is ultimately doomed to fail, that they can do anything they put their mind to...they, are going to the World Cup!  And so it is, that 32 countries from around the world (ok, more like 31 since americans by and large could care less) will, in less than one month, hold their breath 3 times for 90 minute intervals.  And if they are fortunate in those 3 games, they will advance to the next round and continue to hope that their country might be crowned Champions of the World!  The stage is set, the players have been called, the tickets are sold... the World awaits. 

It is as if there were two truly Catholic realities on Earth....one being the Church, one being a sport.  Now, if we could just get the people to rejoice as fervently for Christ as they do for that little ball, if we could get them to see every Sunday in the Divine Liturgy the romance and splendor that they find on the football pitch.  If we could get them to lift their voices to the Lord as heartily as they sing in the stands of a stadium.  

In some way, although quite imperfectly, these things show us the way in which the Early Church grew...through Joy.  Not emotionalism, but Joy.  The "problem of evangelization" which seems to plague so many people today, exists because the Joy of the Christian has been lost.  Joy in suffering, Joy in blessing, Joy in the shortcomings as well as the achievements.  The only way to retain that Joy, is to sanctify the Life through the sacraments, through the Eucharist.  This is why the Church stresses the centrality of the Eucharist to the Life of the Church, and Scripture validates this: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves." --John 6:53.

So bring on the passion, bring on the face-paint, bring on the beer, and let's celebrate the greatest moment in sport, let's participate in the finest liturgy in all of football--- The World Cup.  And maybe, just maybe, after it's all done and we're left wishing it lasted forever, we will turn to see that which DOES last forever...