The Catholic Thing

By Robert Royal.

But first a note: Be sure to tune in tomorrow - Thursday, January 9th at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss the appointment of Cardinal Robert McElroy to head the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., the appointment of the first woman to head a Vatican dicastery, and other issues in the global Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.

Now for today's column...

I don't make any great claim to virtue, but one vice that I've (mostly) avoided is the itch to predict the future. Especially around the New Year, when people - even Catholics - despite warnings from Scripture and Jesus Himself ("sufficient to the day"), often offer themselves as prophets, sometimes even something closer to soothsayers. Not only do we make predictions for the next twelve months, lament or exult over what we think is coming, but we recommend new books or diets or exercise programs or spiritual practices. As if human life is - or should be - a rationally manageable, wholly predictable thing.

Life's a pilgrimage. An adventure. And often, under God, deeply and happily unpredictable.

Item: Practitioners of the dismal science, which is to say economists, often hedge their bets by saying such and such will happen to the economy "all things remaining equal." Which of course, they never are.

Item: Lately, "The Science" does things like predict that even small amounts of alcohol may give you cancer in some far-off future, unless a meta-analysis this year or the next questions those findings and may even recommend a drink or two.

Uncertainties are a good thing because otherwise we would be even more addicted to our own horizons, to very small, all-too-human goals. God has bigger plans. For all of us. And these uncertainties are among the many sly avenues he uses ("subtle is the Lord") to wake us up to greater vistas.

In the ancient and medieval worlds, the unpredictable nature of the world was properly recognized, even personified as Dame Fortuna. A fickle lady, but one entrusted by God with the crucial task of changing things around, beyond human ken, so that no person or group or nation can go long without realizing they're not in control, which is to say, not God. Though the human race being what it is, it's a lesson that we forget or fail to learn over and over.

Which brings me, as you may have been waiting for, to the Vatican's appointment this week of San Diego's Cardinal Robert McElroy as cardinal archbishop of Washington D.C. There are rumors that previous occupants of that post - including Cardinals Wuerl and Gregory along with the papal nuncio to the United States and several figures in Rome - opposed that appointment.

Except for the very exceptional Theodore McCarrick, the archbishop of Washington has usually been expected to be a calming figure, someone who can manage the Church in a city where Democrats and Republicans, liberals, conservatives, leftists, libertarians, and even further-out political oddities all exist both inside and outside the Church. For the most part, they've succeeded in that task.

McElroy's appointment is an oddity. He is a native of California, has spent almost all of his priestly life there (none in Washington), and has no great claim to being the best - or even a good - choice for the new post, other than he's long been a progressive social justice advocate. And, in some readings, "in line" with Pope Francis.

If one were given to speculation, it might be thought that Pope Francis was persuaded to appoint him as a counterweight to the return of Donald Trump. McElroy has been a vocal opponent of deportations. And as an intelligent man (degrees from Stanford and Harvard) he's a more articulate spokesman for that and other progressive positions than any othe...

By Randall Smith.

Experience suggests, and multiple studies show, that people don't act as ethically as they think they will. It is easier to imagine being just and heroic than to be just and heroic. But sometimes the issue isn't a lack of character, it's a skewing of our vision of things.

Josef Pieper, in his masterly book The Four Cardinal Virtues, begins his chapter on prudence with this passage from the Gospel of Matthew (6:22): "If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light," which continues: "but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!"

One crucial question, then, is how we blind ourselves to the moral character of our acts and enter that darkness. Often, it depends on how the issue is framed.

In one instance, we might be focusing on the act. But then later, we must face the potential consequences. And then we might start doing a "cost-benefit" analysis. (In ethics, this is sometimes called "consequentialism," "utilitarianism," or "proportionalism.") Yes, I thought it was wrong to experiment with stem cells from aborted fetuses, but what if we could cure Alzheimer's? Now the moral balance starts to tip in favor. Consequentialist thinking can make the immorality of the act fade.

Problems of this sort suggest the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas who bids us consider not only the consequences of the act and not only the good intentions with which we presume that we're acting - something about which it is easy to fool ourselves - but also the moral object of the act, which is to say: what we are actually doing.

Even here, though, it is easy to blind ourselves. One common way of doing this is to create "non-moral" categories of acts. The incoming president of a company slashes thousands of jobs, putting thousands of people out of work and harming their families, and then says: "This is a business decision." "Business decisions" are also necessarily moral decisions involving persons. We blind ourselves if we don't recognize this fact.

There may be decisions without much moral weight, like whether to choose chocolate or vanilla - although even here, it might have moral weight if there isn't enough chocolate for everyone. But it's best to assume every decision is a moral decision and every choice is either morally good or not. And best again if we made sure we were considering persons rather than merely institutions or ideologies. You don't want to say things like, "Yes, a lot of people are going to be killed, but the utopian communist worker state is being established."

But lest I make the common error of insulating my own institution and ideology from the criticism and critique I am willing to make of others - academics who live in glass houses love to throw stones - let me propose another example closer to home.

Let's say that a university needs more money. (They always need more money.) And let's say the way they get more money is by admitting students who aren't ready for college-level work: can't read serious prose, write a coherent sentence, or do basic math. Many of these students will flunk out, but you can still get one, maybe even two, years of tuition out of them. Or you can pass them, get additional years of tuition, and graduate students who paid a lot of money but can't read, write, or do basic math.

Now let's say a group of faculty goes to the president and says, "We are admitting students who can't do college-level work, and they're flunking out, so we need to fix the problem." There are two ways of fixing this problem. One is to stop admitting these students. The other is to hire instructors who spend hours doing the kind of individualized remedial training these kids need to succeed and then requiring them to attend.

But that costs money, and the whole point is to get more. So let's say the president says instead: "If we stop admitting these kids, this is the number of faculty positions I will have to cut." ...

By John M. Grondelski.

In America, the secular "holiday season" ended sometime around 4 am on January 1, as the last New Year's revelers made their way home for a long winter's nap. Most likely before the 12 days of Christmas are out, most Christmas trees will be gone as well. January 6 will, this year for several reasons, be less often remembered as "Epiphany" than as "Insurrection Day."

Instead, something of a quadrennial secular "holiday season" will now set in. The new Senate and House assembled on January 3. Congress will gather today, January 6, to count Electoral College ballots and confirm the election of the new president and vice president. Finally, on January 20, the (somewhat) new president will be inaugurated.

This year's festive political holiday will be interrupted by one - potentially two - somber events. Wedged into the week of January 6 will be the state funeral of Jimmy Carter, including Washington services on January 9. And Donald Trump's inauguration coincides with Martin Luther King Day, which is likely to spur controversy over how the new president does (or doesn't) embody King's commitments to racial equality.

In any event, the "holiday season" in the religious sense is, for all intents and purposes, over for most Americans. They'll have to wait until next September before they can begin to see Christmas ornaments again.

The Church, of course, insists that the holiday season has only just begun. Christmas Time lasts officially until January 11. Unofficially, it can extend through March 4, Mardi Gras, which is to say "Carnival."

This bifurcation of the "holiday season" from the fullness of Christmas is not, as with the Orthodox, a case of different calendars. It's a question of different perspectives about the "holiday."

The Church spent most of December in Advent, the Christmas preparatory season. America's "holiday season" has no Advent: December is not so much "preparation" (for what would we prepare save the grand finale?) as it is "anticipation," incrementally celebrating the big day through holiday parties, caroling, and attending "The Nutcracker" or "A Christmas Carol." The "preparation" we get is the consumer countdown of buying days until December 25.

For Christians, what started on December 25 continues to have defining value in human life. In its secular shadow, however, the "holiday" is a date, sanctioned by culture and tradition. But nothing more. To attribute to it an abiding significance would, many might argue, breach the "separation of church and state" and unfairly smuggle sectarianism into the public square. Or something like that.

Consider that for Catholics, while January 1 has an intrinsic connection to Christmas (the octave day whose Gospel also includes references to the shepherds' coming), for "holiday" keepers it need not. Christmas trees might offer a pretty ambience, but the focus is on hopes for a better future, without the conviction that what happened eight days prior is what makes that better future possible.

Catholics should not just throw up their hands and acquiesce to this regrettable descent into the status quo. While our larger culture may sharply divide the sacred and the civil, we need not go along. At the very least, we should try to save the spirit of the traditional Christmas season through January 6.

Epiphany, which means the manifestation of the Savior to the "gentiles" (i.e., to the world), was at one time a more important feast than December 25. Also, given that our Orthodox brethren mark Christmas on January 7-8, common ecumenical witness might latch on to the extended celebration to keep Christmas alive.

There are, of course, factors militating against Catholics - even in the Church. The U.S. bishops' transfer of Epiphany to a Sunday has truncated "Christmas Time" and left a vacuum for the identification of January 6 to be filled by a partisan reading. ("Twelfth Night" hardly makes sense to modern Christians when Epiphany can be - according to transfer ...

By Fr. Benedict Kiely.

Long before the ancient and much-needed credal formulas, defining the parameters of our basic beliefs, like the great Councils of Ephesus and of Nicaea, the 1700th anniversary of which we will celebrate in 2025, the very first creed was uttered during the drama of the Easter days.

When the two disciples who encountered the Risen Lord on the road to Emmaus rushed back to Jerusalem to tell the others of their astounding experience, they heard the words: "Yes, it is true, Jesus has risen from the dead." That is the very foundation of our faith. If, as one inane clergyman said many years ago, the Resurrection was merely a "conjuring trick with bones," then we should all eat, drink, and be merry and, perhaps, become Hare Krishna devotees. Yes, it is true: Christ is risen, and all has changed.

Before that fact, we pause and ponder the cosmos-changing, precursory fact, the very reason we celebrate Christmas, without which the Resurrection itself would not have the foundation it required.

We are in the "in-between time" from Christ's first coming at Christmas, to His Second and Final Coming on the Last Day. That phrase comes from the Anglican poet and clergyman, Malcolm Guite. What he means is that, since Christ's birth in Bethlehem, His First Coming, we await His Final Appearance, on the Last Day. All time since His birth is the "in-between" time, as we await his Final Coming, which will not be hidden and in a stable unknown to the great and the good, it will be terrifying.

All those who denied Him, condemned Him, and continue to wound His sacred body with their sins and hatred - let us never be so presumptuous as to say that is not us - will, as the Advent carol says, be "deeply wailing." Our meditation for Christmas is the simple question of who and what we celebrate during the Christmas season.

Jesus Christ, born of Mary, is God. When we genuflect, as we do, during the Creed on Christmas Day at the words, "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us," we are acknowledging, both with our words and the physical attitude of worship and obeisance, that simple truth. Body and soul are, for a rare moment, in harmony.

It is either true, or untrue, there is no middle ground. The idea of the agnostic, a spiritual and intellectual sitting on the fence, is a feeble one, it lacks courage; the fence can also be a rather painful place to perch.

Sir John Betjeman, the late English poet, put it rather well in one of his Christmas poems. When being considered for the position of Poet Laureate, the Guardian newspaper described him as "arbitrary and irrelevant;" something the Guardian would naturally know all about. Betjeman, with his characteristic good humor, enthusiastically agreed that he was irrelevant.

Except that he wrote:

And is true? And is it true,

This most tremendous tale of all.

"This most tremendous tale:" the truth we affirm in the Creed, the dogmas of the Faith, the two-thousand-year-old history of Christianity, the beauty created by Christian culture, the doctrine of the dignity of humanity, and finally the beauty of holiness exemplified in the lives of the saints, all of it depends on the answer to that question: "and is it true?"

If it is, everything is changed. Life, morals, attitude, culture, politics, all of the mundane in the true sense of the word.

Betjeman continues the poem posing the question that, if it is true, all that we think is important, not just for Christmas but throughout our lives, cannot, as he says,

with this single Truth compare

That God was man in Palestine

And lives today in Bread and Wine.

Christmas is a time of joy, of hope, to truly merry-make, to be with friends and family, to acknowledge the truth that we acknowledge has changed our lives, and for the better.

But this celebration, this joy, this "in-between" time that we who call ourselves Christians are living in, until His Second Coming, the day and the hour we do not know, this in-between time, is to prepare for His Second Com...

By Michael Pakaluk.

"Hark the herald angels sing. . . .Joyful, all ye nations rise, Join the triumph of the skies." We have sung this hymn many times over the last several days. But I wonder about those angels in the skies. Probably you picture them as appearing among the stars, like the Milky Way. But what does Luke actually say?

He says that the appearance of the many angels was preceded by the appearance of just one angel. This solitary angel was not in the sky but stood alongside the shepherds on the ground: "And behold an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone round about them; and they feared with a great fear." (Luke 2:9, Douay-Rheims)

This angel came upon them suddenly and caught them by surprise standing there. Compare how Luke uses the same expression (in Greek) for the appearance of two angels after the resurrection: "And it came to pass, as they were astonished in their mind at this, behold, two men stood by them, in shining apparel. And as they were afraid, and bowed down their countenance towards the ground, they said unto them: Why seek you the living with the dead?" (Luke 24:4-5) These two men, or angels, were most definitely not in the sky, as they were standing then in a cramped tomb!

The solitary angel tells the shepherds not to be afraid. He must have been a terrifying sight in the dark night from his startling radiance. He tells that the Messiah has been born that very day in Bethlehem and that they can find him wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God, and saying: Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will." (Luke 2:13-14) If this multitude was indeed "with" the solitary angel, and that solitary angel was standing next to the shepherds, then this multitude was also standing next to the shepherds, and it was not suspended in the skies.

How can this be? What could they have looked like? Luke takes pains to tell us that the shepherds were out in the fields. His word suggests that they even lived out in the fields. (The Cambridge Bible comments: "This does not prove, as some have supposed, that the Nativity took place in spring, for in some pastures of Palestine the shepherds to this day bivouac with their flocks in winter.")

But has an army never been in the fields? Some readers of Luke's Gospel would have seen Roman legions maneuvering across fields preparing for battle. We ourselves have seen movies where Roman battles are recreated, for example, Spartacus. It's not like there is no room "out in the fields" for an array of men or of angels.

And so, that is how it would have looked like, each member of this multitude of angels presumably luminous and visible, probably in the form of a man. They appeared suddenly, as when smoke or fog clears, and you discover that you are actually in the midst of an invading force. Think of the scene in The Longest Day when the German soldier in the bunker looks out to the English Channel and is astonished to see an invasion force of thousands of ships appear suddenly in the dawn light.

Luke's word really does mean an army. It was "a multitude of a heavenly army" which suddenly appeared. Not "an army in the heavens," but "a heavenly army," on the ground. "Behold the wonderful working of God," St. John Chrysostom comments on the passage, "He first brings Angels down to men, and then brings men up to Heaven. The Heaven became earth, when it was about to receive earthly things." The Heaven does not become earth unless those angels are standing on the earth. Multitudes of saints will go up to heaven as a multitude of angels came down.

The word "army" is important (Greek, stratia). Translators keep rendering it "host." "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host" (RSVCE, also NABRE). "With the angelic host proclaim," says the hymn.

Yet no one uses the word "host," or even knows what it means. A host for ...

By Francis X. Maier.

In our house, we cling to the Christmas season like survivors of a torpedoed steamer. The tree stays up until it's a fire hazard. The carols play through the Baptism of the Lord, with an encore or two until Candlemas. We don't retire the crèche until Presentation of the Lord. Christmas anchors our year.

One might reasonably ask why. It's a fair question. Easter, not Christmas, is the central event of the Christian calendar. And alas, Christmas now comes with a boatload of vulgar commerce. Some of it is entertaining. John Travolta as Santa Claus, hawking the Capital One card to the beat of "Stayin' Alive," is marketing genius. Television betting ads, not so much. Nothing says "crime against humanity" like a group of TV street carolers singing the joys of the Pennsylvania Lottery to the tune of " The Twelve Days of Christmas," while Gus the Groundhog - the Lottery's mascot - urges listeners to gamble away their paychecks.

Then there's the weirdness factor. Who could forget the recording of those talented dogs that bark "Jingle Bells"? President Biden may want to pardon whoever had that idea before he leaves office. America's Litany of Xmas Oddities would be longer than St. Nick's naughty list. A neighbor across the way from us has Mary, Joseph, and the Baby Jesus on his lawn every night during the holidays. . .surrounded by a zoo of electric reindeer, grinning elves, and half-inflated Frosty the Snowmen. The intent is pious. The effect - regrettably - is rather different: a hostage Holy Family with Stockholm syndrome.

America may still rank as the most "religious" nation among the world's advanced economies. But Christmas as "Christ Mass," as the incarnation of God's son for the salvation of the world and the joy that should flow from it, gets an annual drowning in noise and appetite. The question before us is why?

Sometimes people beyond our shores see our foibles more clearly than we do ourselves. In 1831-2, Alexis De Tocqueville spent nine months in America doing the research that eventually shaped his classic text, Democracy in America. In 1988, the scholar Wang Huning did much the same. He spent six months traveling in the United States. Then he wrote America Against America, a sweeping cultural analysis of the American landscape. He's now the chief political theorist of the Chinese Communist Party and one of China's senior leaders.

Wang saw America through the lens of a critic and civilizational competitor. Thus, some of his conclusions are biased or simply wrong. Yet his observations are both penetrating and instructive. Americans, argued Wang, "have no sense of history" and little interest in, or patience with, mystery. They're quantity-oriented, materialistic by nature, and highly innovative, which accounts for U.S. success in technology. They're also emotional, "especially in politics, religion, culture, and science." After the U.S. election circus of the last six months, all of this should sound familiar.

Religion, Wang added, is a powerful force in U.S. culture, and millions of Americans are sincere religious believers. But many others are not. And that includes many churchgoers. Churchgoing practice and genuine belief don't always overlap because U.S. religion, argued Wang, often functions as an inherited habit, or a positive ethical code, or a means of social service, or a tool for psychological well-being without a vital supernatural core.

This also sounds familiar. And it has cultural consequences, one of them being that "Christmas commemorates the coming of Jesus Christ, but the holiday has long [since] been secularized" - in effect, diminished - into a heavily commercial "folk holiday."

Wang wrote those words more than thirty years ago. What was true then is even more clearly true now. It explains the Halloween-party skeleton with a Santa cap standing in a front yard just down our street.

C.S. Lewis, who could never be accused of laxity or insincerity in his faith, had a special distaste...

By Fr. Elias Carr, Can. Reg.

Remember your first day in a new school or at a new job? The excitement of embarking on a new adventure, but the fear of wondering: Will I make friends? What will people be like? Will I fit in? In his brilliant book, Wanting, Luke Burgis coins the term "Freshmanistan" to capture the everyday experience.

Burgis connects that experience with the concept of "mimesis" (imitation of a special sort) as elaborated by the great Catholic philosopher and professor of literature René Girard. Mimesis typifies humanity according to Girard. Like other animals, we share instincts that govern basic urges for the promotion of our lives, but we also have something more: human desires. The latter are open and undetermined. How do we decide what we want? Girard argues we learned them from observing other people.

For example, I go out with friends to eat but nothing catches my eye. I ask the others what they are ordering. Suddenly I find that I want something I never wanted before: this is mimetic desire in operation. I imitate the desires of others without realizing it. This is a feature of human life from earliest childhood throughout adulthood. We learn to speak and much more from others around us. (Curious? Have a look at my new book, I Came To Cast Fire: An Introduction to René Girard. Warning: It may change your life.)

So long as there is enough for everyone or people are not in immediate competition and nothing vital is at stake, there is no need for conflict over what they desire. But when the supply of something is short, however, or life is threatened, rivalries arise, tempers flare, and violence ensues.

Girard argues that Bible reveals the role of mimesis, the rivalry it causes, and the scapegoating that counters it. This knowledge makes it possible for Christians to make good choices because they understand that not everything one wants is really worth wanting. Is this not what the often-experienced post-Christmas malaise signifies? We are looking for something more than still greater material possessions. We are looking to be more. And we find that "more" in Christ and his friends, the saints.

St. Gregory Nazianzus (329-389) provides a wonderful example of the positive kind of mimesis, even as he is aware of the perils of negative mimesis, in a sermon about his friendship with St. Basil (330-379).

These Greek Fathers - whose feast it is today - tirelessly safeguarded the truth of the incarnation of the Eternal Word (against the Arianism that denied it) and defended the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps because of their famous friendship, the current calendar of the Roman Liturgy commemorates them on the same day.

The aging Gregory was not able to attend his friend's funeral, but he was able to write a beautiful and detailed funeral oration.

Both came from Cappadocia (in modern-day Turkey), along with St. Basil's younger brother, St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 - c. 395). They are usually referred to as the Cappadocian Fathers. Gregory describes the extremely "mimetic" nature of tutors and students in Athens, the usual intellectual and social ambitions, as "absolutely absurd and silly." And whereas hazing was the order of the day for freshmen, Gregory protected his friend from this ordeal, persuading his classmates instead to honor newly arrived Basil.

The saintly friends came to Athens in pursuit of true wisdom (sophia), but often found vain professors and envious students bent more on winning disputes and gaining prestige rather than following out rational arguments. Their decision to withdraw from those conflicts strengthened their resolve to do all things in common: "When, in the course of time, we acknowledged our friendship and recognized that our ambition was a life of true wisdom, we became everything to each other: we shared the same lodging, the same table, the same desires, the same goal. Our love for each other grew daily warmer and deeper."

The love of God is capable of transforming mimetic ...

But first: A Blessèd New Year to All!

Now for today's column, by St. Augustine of Hippo:

We see, beloved Brethren, that you have come together to-day as for a feast and that for this day you have gathered here in greater numbers than usual. We urge you to remember what you sang a moment ago; otherwise it will only mean that your tongue made some noise while your heart remained still. The sounds you have produced in each other's ears, these it is for your love to reproduce with loud voice in the ears of God. Now, this is what you were singing: Save us, O Lord, our God; gather us from among the Gentiles that we may give thanks to Thy holy name. On this day the Gentiles celebrate their festival with worldly joy of the flesh, with the sound of most vain and filthy songs, with banquets and shameless dances. If what the Gentiles do in celebrating this false feast does not please you, then you will be gathered from among the Gentiles. . . .

The simple fact, therefore, that a man believes, hopes, and loves does not mean that he is saved forthwith. For it makes a difference what he believes, what he hopes, and what he loves. It is quite obvious that no-one in any walk of life spends his days without his soul experiencing these three things believing, hoping, loving. If you do not believe what the Gentiles believe, do not hope what the Gentiles hope, do not love what the Gentiles love, you are gathered from among the Gentiles, you are segregated, that is, you are separated from the Gentiles.

And in the face of all that separates you in soul, you must not let the physical contacts you make frighten you. For what, for instance, could be accounted a greater separation than the fact that those people believe in demon gods, while you believe in Him who is the one and true God? That they hope in the foolish things of the world, while you place your hope in eternal life with Christ? That they love the world, but you love the Artisan of the world? Let him, then, whose faith, whose hope, whose love is different from theirs, prove it by his life, show it by his deeds.

You are going to observe the practice of giving New Year's presents like a pagan, you are going to play at dice, and you are going to make yourself drunk? How can this be a different faith, a different hope, a different love? How can you have the effrontery to sing, Save us, O Lord, our God; and gather us from among the Gentiles? For your segregation from the Gentiles consists in leading a life different from theirs despite your contacts with them. And what such segregation means, you will realize if you will but put it into effect, if you will but give proof of it.

Do not forget our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became man for our sakes, has paid a price for us. It was His price, His own, that He paid. His reason for paying it was that He wished to redeem us, to gather us from among the Gentiles. But if you associate with the Gentiles, you do not want to follow Him who has redeemed you. You associate with the Gentiles by the life you live, by your deeds, your heart; by believing as they do, by hoping as they do, by loving as they do. You prove yourself ungrateful to your Redeemer, you do not acknowledge the price paid for you the Blood of the Immaculate Lamb. That you may, therefore, follow your Redeemer who has redeemed you with His Blood, you must not be associated with the Gentiles by behaving and acting like them.

They give New Year's presents: you give alms! They entertain themselves with debauched singing: find your entertainment in the words of the Scriptures! They run to the theater: you go to church! They get drunk: you practice fasting! If you cannot fast to-day, at least eat with moderation. If you do this, you have sung rightly, Save us, O Lord, our God; and gather us from among the Gentiles. . . .

And so, many will struggle to-day in their hearts with the words they have heard. For we said, "Do not give New Year's presents; give to the poor." It is not enou...

By Msgr. Charles Fink.

The recent kerfuffle over kneeling/not kneeling to receive the Blessed Sacrament brought back to me memories of a Church history professor I had in the seminary. He was renowned for his enormous library and his encyclopedic knowledge.

Commenting on the redistricting scheme of the French revolutionaries, who decided that a simple grid defining counties would be much more rational and a great improvement on the less tidy but organically evolved pattern of regional associations then in existence, our priest professor opined that "It takes a great genius to make great nonsense."

With less charity than my former teacher, I'm inclined to say that not only does it not take a great genius to make great nonsense, but that almost any fool is capable of promulgating and justifying even the most patently wrong-headed practices.

Our parish church just underwent a renovation, which saw the restoration of an altar rail and the beautification of the sanctuary, which, though not overly ornate, is truly breathtaking. As per the pastor's instructions, Communion is now distributed at the altar rail. Communicants may kneel or stand and receive in the hand or on the tongue; there is no pressure to receive in any one way.

The upshot of this is that the processional flow of Communion is controlled by the priest, not by the choices of the people as to how they will receive. He is constantly moving, and there is always someone in front of him prepared to receive the sacrament. Those concerned with the efficient flow of the Communion procession should be delighted with this practice, unless, of course, they are motivated by some other agenda.

Fascinatingly, but not surprisingly, with no coercion whatsoever, many parishioners opt to kneel to receive Communion, some in the hand, some on the tongue. Those who choose to remain standing are also divided as to the manner in which they take the sacrament. Not only does this leave everyone free to choose how they'll receive Communion; it encourages and allows for greater reverence in reception.

Chances are that all those coming forward for Communion will have a few moments to stop walking - sorry, processing - stand or kneel at the altar rail, think about what they are doing, receive the Body of Christ, and then feel no urgency to scoot off for fear of holding up the parade. Again, sorry, I mean the procession.

I was brought up in the Episcopalian Church, more the Protestant than the Anglo-Catholic variety. We didn't believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and many of us attended many more Sunday morning prayer services than communion services. But when we did attend communion services, we knelt at an altar rail, took communion in the hand, and returned to our pews, all in a manner much more reverent than is typical in most Catholic Churches nowadays, even though Catholics supposedly believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, while Episcopalians of my stripe did not.

I'm sure there are multiple factors that account for this odd contrast between the level of reverence I experienced at communion services as a church-going Episcopalian and what I've beheld over the course of nearly five decades of distributing the Eucharist in the Catholic Church. But if I were the devil and wanted to set out to destroy belief in Christ's Real Presence in the Eucharist, I could not have done a better job than the geniuses who removed all the altar rails, busied our sanctuaries with troops of Eucharistic and other ministers, and turned the Communion procession into an assembly line on which the watchword is "keep moving!"

In a world of rampant and crass unbelief, it's no easy task to hold on to the faith. We can all relate to the man in the Gospel who said to Jesus, "Lord, I do believe; help my unbelief." (Mark 9:24) Help, not hinder. That would include our churches being truly sacred spaces, with primacy of place given to the tabernacle, the altar, and the sanctuary. And yes, ...

By Brad Miner.

I've often written here about painting. Now, I want to write about music, a subject about which I've no expertise, although I do have 6,261 tracks on my iPhone.

Act one of Noël Coward's "intimate" comedy, Private Lives, begins with an off-stage orchestra playing some innocuous tune, to which it "returns persistently," and occasions this exchange:

Elyot: Nasty insistent little tune.

Amanda: Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

The notion, I guess, is that emotive music - strings swelling in crescendo, perhaps - is manipulative. Sometimes that's true. Or it may be what these days we call an "earworm." My grandchildren, still in their toddler period, can't get enough of the nasty and persistent "Baby Shark." It's on my iPhone, of course.

But to my mind, there's nothing as potent as great music. Plato and Pope Benedict XVI had a similar view. And I have proof.

There's an Internet meme called "reaction videos," in which a young adult YouTuber with a "channel" listens to music suggested by a "follower." Music, that is, the host has not previously heard.

When I first stumbled onto one of these (an African woman listening to Luciano Pavarotti), my first thought was: Really? She's never heard opera? But then. . . .Perhaps not, if it's mostly missing from her experiences or culture.

In fact, opera wasn't much of a part of my youth, although I heard snippets in Bugs Bunny cartoons, on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and other variety programs, and sometimes in movies.

I also knew from sports that "it ain't over till the fat lady sings," although I was unaware then that this was also a meme - in this case, taken from Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, specifically Brünnhilde in Die Walküre, who is sometimes portrayed by a soprano wearing a horned Viking helmet and hefting a spear. That's mostly satire and rarely seen in actual performances.

It was William Congreve, not Shakespeare as many believe, who wrote - in the first line of his 1697 play The Mourning Bride - that "Musick hath charms to soothe a savage Breast / to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak." (Note too that it's Breast, not beast.) It's certainly the case that music can get us to move our feet or move us to tears, especially if powerful experiences are associated in our minds: an alma mater, a national anthem, or a song once heard at a funeral.

But sometimes, it's just the music itself - the music, and the performer. For me, "Nessun Dorma," from Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot (which premiered in 1926), is one of those. And that's odd because, in context, the aria itself would seem unlikely to evoke a tearful reaction.

Calaf, aka the Unknown Prince (il principe ignoto ), has correctly answered three riddles posed by Princess Turandot to her suitors (rather like Portia in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, although in the play it's caskets (gold, silver, lead): "Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves"). But Princess Turandot, though she has promised to marry the suitor who answers correctly, has also decreed that a suitor who fails to answer the riddles must die.

She's Portia and also Shylock.

But despite Calaf's success, she reneges because she hates men. So, Calaf makes a bargain: if by the next morning, Turandot can discover his name (remember he is ignoto - incognito), he'll surrender himself for execution. But if she can't figure out who he is, she must marry him. She agrees but decrees that throughout the kingdom none shall sleep (nessun dorma) until the prince's name is discovered. If they fail, she'll slaughter the lot of them.

It's Turandot's subjects who mustn't sleep, and it's they (in chorus offstage) who begin the aria, to which Calaf joins in.

Luciano Pavarotti sang Nessun Dorma often, and any tenor worth his salt has tackled it. And in those aforementioned "reaction videos," not a few are of people listening to Pavarotti sing the aria. None shrugs it off; most are awed. Others are reduced to tears. But I've chosen none of those...