Prayers Please

I've not had too much to say recently here, and I'm not sure when I will. However, prayers are always appreciated.

Humeral Veils

Another post on vestments because, after a Solemn Mass I went to recently for Assumption, I was thinking about humeral veils.

Some people are under the impression that the humeral veil is worn to stop unconsecrated hands from touching consecrated objects. However, this is untrue. As I have explained before, only consecrated things may touch the Eucharist itself, but there need not be an infinite regress of consecrations to touch consecrated things.

In fact, touching consecrated vessels used to be limited simply to clerics in Major Orders and was one of their distinguishing priveleges that made them Major rather than Minor (even though the subdiaconate is a sacramental and not a Sacrament proper). Yet the subdeacon uses the humeral veil to hold the paten during Solemn Mass, even though during his ordination he is handed an empty paten and chalice (thus showing he can touch consecrated vessels without issue).

Rather, the humeral veil (note similarity of the term "humeral" to "humility") seems to signify that the object one is holding does not belong to you. So, for example, in Benediction. The priest holds the monstrance with a humeral veil. Now, monstrances are not consecrated (only the luna, the "clip" which holds the Sacred Host, is consecrated). But the priest covers his hands and arms with the humeral veil so that it is clear in Benediction that it is Christ in the Blessed Sacrament who blesses, not the priest. The priest "disappears" (his face may even be covered by the monstrance itself if it's big enough and you look straight-on).

A similar principle is true for the so-called vimpa. The vimpa is a shawl worn by servers at Pontifical Masses to hold the mitre and crosier, to show that they do not belong to them (they are proper to the bishop himself, of course). However, the distinction between vimpa and humeral veil seems rather late, and even Catholic Encyclopedia in 1917 seems to indicate that the vimpa is just a humeral veil (if made smaller in size), as it speaks of the "humeral veil worn by the mitre-bearer" which I'm pretty sure means what is often now called the vimpa in traditionalist circles. Green vimpae for the mitre and crosier are shown here:

The vimpae below illustrate this principle of showing to whom the items are actually proper quite nicely by having on their backs the Arms of the Cardinal whose mitre and crosier they are bearing, indicating that they are to be associated with him and not the servers themselves:

Here is a familiar face as subdeacon bearing the paten in humeral veil at a Solemn Mass:

Why the humeral veil for subdeacons with the paten at Solemn Mass like this? The same Catholic Encyclopedia article seems to suggest that originally the paten was borne by an acolyte and was not held by the subdeacon until later. This would explain the humeral veil and hark back somewhat to the theory that the humeral veil is about people holding (consecrated) vessels they shouldn't touch. The subdeacon apparently bore the chalice with a cloth that later evolved into the chalice veil.

However, I'd also theorize that it may be related to the concept of the humeral veil signifying non-ownership of a held item in liturgy too. While subdeacons can touch patens and other consecrated vessels (say, during distribution of communion, as no "stick" is required for paten for a subdeacon, or for washing in the sacristy, etc)...the paten at Mass might be seen as "proper" to the priest and thus belonging only to him (so when a lesser minister bears it, he wears the humeral veil.)

Even more interesting, I might theorize it perhaps relates to the origin of the rite of the comingling, the so called fermentum, as explained in this book:

The unity of the local church with its bishop celebrated in the stational liturgy was especially evident in the ancient practice called the fermentum (literally 'leaven'). Roman presbyters were obliged to celebrate the Eucharist on Sundays and feast days in their own churches (tituli) for those who could not take part in the solemn papal Eucharist. As a symbol of the communion shared between the Bishop of Rome and his flock--present and absent--the bishop broke off small pieces of his host at the time of Communion which would be given to each of the tituli for their own Eucharist that day. The small piece of that host was then carried by the acolytes or deacons back to those churches. At the moment of Communion, the presbyters would place the small fragment of the papal host in the chalice. Pope Innocent I attests to the practice in a famous letter sent to Decentius, Bishop of Gubbio, in the year 415. It is not clear when the custom was introduced, and after the seventh century, with the waning of the stational liturgy, it was only continued at the Easter vigil.

Perhaps the holding of the paten in a humeral veil by acolytes and later subdeacon evolved from the bringing of the fragment of the fermentum from the papal liturgy to the various tituli. One can imagine that a minister would hold this paten with the papal fragment (which did not belong to them, but to the Pope) until it was time for the comingling (whose origin is certainly in this practice of the fermentum). At least, that's what I always imagine the historical provenance is when I'm at a Solemn Mass.

Coach God

Okay, so I know I said a recent post was likely the sportiest thing you'd ever see on this blog, but I felt compelled to use this metaphor too today, if only vaguely.

I've been preparing for some major changes in my life this past month, practically speaking, and also on something of an emotional roller coaster. It's amazing what highs and lows I can go through in the course of a day.

Some of it is just in my own head. Self-contained thought and emotion without outlet tends to sour rather than sweeten, and so dwelling on things, even in an attempt to temporarily comfort oneself, can eventually leave the rationalization feeling hollow if all the "evidence" for why every little thing is gonna be alright is just arguments constructed in ones own head rather than any new external evidence or validation.

Some of the bumps in the road are "real" problems related to external circumstances, however, and it is here especially that I feel the hand of God. I've encountered many obstacles in my life in the past few weeks, and they can send me reeling or tempted to despair. But, at the same time, I feel like they've made me stronger, more perseverant. And marching forward in spite of them, in a sort of blind faith and trust without any sensible consolation, has so far always been rewarded eventually (both recently and in my life at large) by the obstacle being removed and everything working out even better than I'd expected.

I guess my point is: trust God. He may lead you through an "obstacle course" to make you stronger or to test your Faith, to increase your fortitude or prove you're willing to suffer much to succeed, but if you keep soldiering on and don't let the stress get to you, I have always seen things work out in the end, in amazing ways I never would have even expected. I feel almost like God does coach us with escalating hardship this way, like going through some sort of boot-camp, and that if we remain single-hearted about our intentions, even in some sense "willful" like the nagging widow parable, He won't let us down, and it can all only be good for us in the end.

Winston Churchill knew a lot about this, I think, because he generated not one, but two relevant (and very famous, though I hope never cliched) quotes: "When you're going through Hell, keep going," and "Never, never, never, never give up!" I think a lot of people are "inspired" by those sentiments, but then actually never follow through. And inspiration without action...really isn't even inspiration at all. A good coach knows how to use inspiration to incite constructive action.

Anscombe and Intentional Act

Two sex posts in one day!!!

Actually, that shouldn't be too surprising. Obviously, when one is contemplating a topic one is bound to have a cascade of thoughts that don't necessarily make it into the first post, that are the result of further reflection or discussion with readers.

A friend of mine recommended an article by Elizabeth Anscombe from back in 1972 defending the Humanae Vitae and the Church's notions of the virtue of chastity.

One thing I like about this article is how it addresses all the common objections both practical and theological, but most especially "historical," to the Church's teaching (and the "wedge in the door" some people on both sides of the argument see NFP as being, the "change" some think its allowance represents).

Another thing I like is how, though it does touch on very specific technical questions of morality, the overall outlook of the article is ultimately broad and "big picture." Rather than obsess about this or that point of the minutiae of sexual morality being discussed out-of-context (as I've sometimes done in my attempt to get everything pegged down)...I like Anscombe's organizing principle that the Good actualized in sex is nothing other than Marriage itself (and that, basically, since marriage cannot be separated from the idea of parenthood, only the conceptive sort of act can be The Marital Act and actualize the good of marriage, even if the good of conception itself is not always actualized).

However, I am going to be obsessing over one minor technical point, because it involves changing or modifying an opinion I've expressed in the past.
Specifically, I have maintained that it would be helpful, in defending the teachings, for the Church to maintain a clearer distinction between contraception (which modifies the sex act itself through non-vaginal ejaculation) and sterilization (which occurs before the fact, and is wrong whether sex in fact follows or not, but which does not necessarily render the sex itself unchaste; for example, men with vasectomies aren't required to get them reversed, and canon courts have recognized sex on the pill as valid consummation of marriage in a way they never would for condoms.)
However, Anscombe's article got me thinking that perhaps there is less of a distinction than I had thought.
Oddly enough, it was specifically her mentioning douching as a contraceptive method that got me thinking. My sterilization/contraception dichotomy doesn't really take into account after-the-fact methods of preventing conception. Oh, I had thought of douching, but had just sort of assumed it was lumped in with contraception given that it ultimately involves a sort of post facto frustration of actual seminal deposit.
However, I was thinking today that if what matters for morality is the character of the act of the will at the time, that post-contraception may be as distinct as pre-contraception (ie, sterilization). Because, obviously, just as a man might get a vasectomy and then repent before having sex with his wife (separating a bad act of mutilation from a good sex act)...so too a couple might have perfectly chaste sex, only for the wife to decide 20 minutes later that she was going to douche.
In both cases, there is a question of potential temporal separation between what are in effect two different acts of the will (the choice to do something to prevent conception on the one hand, and the choice to actually have sex on the other), whereas in what I was calling "contraception" in the strict sense, the two choices seemed inseparable (ie, there was one choice only: to have an unnatural sort of sex).
And yet, then, I thought...I suppose there could be separate acts even during sex. For example, the choice to start sex with a condom (intending to finish like that) would be unchaste and immoral by that intent, but if the couple had a miraculous change of heart even during the act itself, and removed the condom, the choice to continue and finish naturally would be a new separate good choice (that would not, however, excuse the first bad intent/choice).
So, it seems to me, before-the-fact and after-the-fact methods perhaps cannot be differentiated in kind from during-the-act methods. Although before-the-fact methods, by the nature of their temporal separation, allow for the possibility of the sex being a new act (with a potentially new intent if the couple repents of the contraceptive intent in the meantime)...in most cases the intent of the sterilization will be, obviously, to exclude conception from the sex later, and as such forms virtually one act with the sex itself (and has the character, by that very intent, of unchastity and not merely mutilation as I had argued before) unless, as I said, a new resolve is made in the meantime (which then involves two acts of the will: first bad, then good).
Likewise, though an after-the-fact method might be made separate from the choice to have otherwise natural intercourse itself, if it was intended already before or during the act, it renders the whole act unchaste by intent. And even if the decision is made 20 minutes after, then this decision simply constitutes the "reverse" of the "changing resolves" situation described for before-the-fact methods in the last paragraph: it involves a second act of the will that is unchaste, even though the first was moral and good.
So, I would now admit that sterilization and contraception are the same species of sin, and that while before-the-fact methods might allow (by their temporal separation) for a greater likelihood of a second act to take place that is good (in the form of repentance or changing resolve, even without reversing the procedure), in most cases they form virtually one intent with the act itself, and do have the character of unchastity by that intent.

Of course, to clarify, the intent not to actually reproduce is not bad in itself, obviously, or all celibacy or abstinence would have to be condemned! We are not required to be actualizing any particular good at any given time unless there is a positive obligation. However, as I discussed before, the deformity in contraception lies in this intent entering into and changing the internal structure or logic of the type of act chosen itself. In NFP there may be an intent to not conceive, yes, but it is "parallel" to the choice of having sex (obviously no one would say the couple is having sex "in order to not conceive"!) and actually related to the choice to abstain on the fertile days.

As Anscombe says, "you use the rhythm method not just by having intercourse now, but by not having it next week, say; and not having it next week isn't something that does something to today's intercourse to turn it into an infertile act." So the intent to avoid conception in NFP does not change the sort of act chosen as it does in contraception. The intent exists, yes, but "parallel" to the choice to have sex in itself, because the non-conceptive intent is actually ssociated with the choice of abstinence on the fertile days, not with the choice of sex on the infertile days (because, obviously, no conception would happen on the infertile days whether sex takes place or not).

Permissive Will and Sufficient Grace

Random, but another thought or analogy on NFP I had, as it troubles me that so many people seem to view it as equivalent to contraception (because they apparently have a consequentialist understanding of morality) when to me they are clearly worlds apart.

Specifically, I thought today of the difference between God's indicative vs. His permissive Will.

God does not actively cause evil or suffering. Nevertheless, Providence is sovereign over all (even our free choices) and Providence sometimes "arranges" things in such a manner that He foresees evil or suffering will result (and even be instrumental or "intended" in some final sense) for the sake of the greater Good. Everything happens for a reason.

Yet this sort of passive Providential "allowance" for evil, this subtle arrangement of its place in the drama, as the result of some otherwise neutral or good thing He does (like giving us free will, etc)...is considered very different from God actively willing or causing evil. It is almost like God using "Double Effect" in the cosmos (it's just that God foresees all the consequences, good and bad, of all His acts).

Likewise, it is not always wrong to "arrange" events so that, due to something we are not actively causing, some good is excluded in the practical external circumstances, as long as the orientation of our Will is still ordered properly and intelligibly relative to that good in the internal moral sense.

I thought also of the difference, probably even more apt, between God giving sufficient vs. efficacious grace. God's grace can truly be called sufficient even if He infallibly foresees (and by His permissive Will even "intends" in some sense) it will infallibly fail. Deliberately not including the actual good of a good act of our Will doesn't change the fact that the grace is still sufficient in its potential, and is definitely very different than actively willing us to sin.

An act of the Will can still, internally, contain a good in potentia like that, can still be an act that sets the Will on the proper "trajectory" towards The Good, even before the consideration of external circumstances verifies whether there are obstacles (uncaused by the Will itself) that may block the path of that trajectory once it is "fired," as it were.

But morality doesn't primarily depend on the practical success of actualizing goods externally, it depends on the orientation of the Will itself towards the internal Form of the Good. God giving a grace He infallibly foresees will (given the circumstances external to His own will; ie, the person's free will), fail (and even perhaps, in the plan of Providence, "needs" to fail for the sake of the greater good) is not the same as actively causing someone to sin (even when He could have given an efficacious grace instead!) God's choice of merely sufficient-but-not-efficacious grace cannot be said to be disordered.

And from here, I think the analogy I'm getting at is rather clear. Far from being a loop-hole or scholastic complication, NFP (and the whole moral framework it is a part of) is a logical consequence of the very nature of our theodicy.

Too Many Doctors?

Pope Benedict announced at WYD that St. John of Avila will be named a Doctor of the Church.

Is it just me, or is this inflation in that title a bit troubling. The four original Doctors of the (Western) Church were proclaimed in 1298. No more were so titled until St. Pius V named four Doctors of the Eastern Church in 1568 along with St. Thomas Aquinas, of course. St. Bonaventure was named in 1588 and four more in the 1700's...but then there was a huge explosion in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the novel naming of three (female) Doctress-Virgins. In less than 200 years, fourteen became 33 and, now, 34.

I find this troubling. Prior to 1588...in 300 years only two Popes invoked this title. Since 1828, almost every Pope has named at least one. As if it's just one of those things a Pope has to do at least once. That sort of tokenism troubles me. Next every Pope will be wanting to make at least one ex cathedra statement in their pontificate...

Now, I'll admit, most of the Doctors make sense to me. Most of them really are towering theological figures who one would expect to be given that title (in the West, at least, though a Western bias is very apparent).

However, there are liturgical concerns too. Though it may not be a principle in the Novus Ordo, in the Old Rite every Doctor definitely got a feast, a Double, on the calendar (and even, at one point, had the Credo said at their Masses). And yet calendar cluttering is one concern I think would need to be dealt with in any re-attempt of the reform of the Old Rite.

I'd be inclined to have only an average of three feasts per week (though there may be a way, as was eventually attempted, to keep many more minor Saints simply as commemorations with their Collects) and yet at this rate, there's already a Doctor for well more than half the weeks year. Let alone other Saints. And there is no particular guidance on how to commemorate the Doctress-Virgins (St. Theresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Therese of Lisieux) in the Old Rite.

And 33 was such a nice round symbolic number too. Now the next numerological "milestone" they could hit would be 40...

Polygamy

A few months ago, Archbishop Dolan "warned" everyone that legal recognition for polygamy could follow upon recognition of gay "marriage."

Sensationalism, perhaps, but...frankly don't see why polygamy didn't come first. Or why that is the bogeyman he's chosen to use. At least there is historical (and Biblical!) precedent for polygamy!

Heck, in traditional Catholic thought, polygamy isn't even considered against the primary precepts of the natural law, and certainly is/was allowed for non-Christians at least. It's even recognized still in Canon Law:

Can. 1148 §1. When he receives baptism in the Catholic Church, a non-baptized man who has several non-baptized wives at the same time can retain one of them after the others have been dismissed, if it is hard for him to remain with the first one. The same is valid for a non-baptized woman who has several non-baptized husbands at the same time.

§2. In the cases mentioned in §1, marriage must be contracted in legitimate form after baptism has been received, and the prescripts about mixed marriages, if necessary, and other matters required by the law are to be observed.

§3. Keeping in mind the moral, social, and economic conditions of places and of persons, the local ordinary is to take care that the needs of the first wife and the others dismissed are sufficiently provided for according to the norms of justice, Christian charity, and natural equity.

This canon is relevant mainly in pagan mission territories, of course, Africa and Papua New Guinea and the like. Still, as a Catholic, I actually have a lot fewer qualms about polygamy (polyandry is a bit more problematic; one man can impregnate several women at a time, but the reverse is not true) than about gay "marriage." For the unbaptized, I mean.

And there is perhaps some indication of the first steps of pushes in that direction. I'm not saying it's comparable. Those people are trying to make their situation (which they conceive of as polygamy) legal in Utah as opposed to being covered by the bigamy law for simple cohabitation. They aren't seeking positive legal recognition, merely for their current living situation to not be illegal.

It's not "really" a big deal. But, then again, people said striking down sodomy laws wasn't really a big deal because "they were never enforced anyway. Not that I'm saying I support laws attempting to regulate private behavior between consenting adults (I don't), but there's no denying that it was a legal wedge that, just a few years later, did play out as positive state recognition (as opposed to just toleration) for homosexual unions, and the manipulative tactics of social re-engineering apparent there are fascinating, and potentially alarming for Christians.

I'm not saying it's comparable. But I am saying that even discussing "polygamy" at the level of the Supreme Court could be (in an imaginable scenario, even if it's not the way things actually play out), a step in "opening the conversation" culturally (I also think of TV shows like Sister Wives).

Whether this will ultimately become part of the pattern remains to be seen. But there is an eerie pattern to how things previously unthinkable are normalized in our culture, with the media and the courts playing a big role (as well as denial, up to the last minute, that there is any sort of slippery slope).

Even if it remains "fringe"...polygamy is no longer "off the radar" in our culture. There has been a lot of coverage all decade, some positive, some negative (one thinks of that case with the FLDS). But it's being discussed, it is in people's heads now.

And I think we can expect that activists for it will try to appropriate the banner of "progress" that the gay rights movement, in turn, appropriated from the civil rights movement, etc. It's a powerful narrative to attempt to plug oneself into symbolically in the collective consciousness.

I'm not going to make any predictions about whether they'll succeed or not in convincingly becoming the "heirs" of the progressivist banner in their endless parade of "causes," but I will say at least that I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of legal framework was created to deal with such households.

It may not get all the benefits if marriage (can an insurance plan really be expected to cover potentially dozens of separate individuals??) but when it comes to things like needing to sort out custody of children, power of attorney, visitation rights, property ownership, etc...it almost seems negligent to me at this point not to have some sort of arrangement legally when such cases exist. At that point, ideology aside, there is a practical reality that has to be dealt with.

And if one man is the father of children by several different women...does the State really think that making him choose only one as his "wife" and just having the others be "merely" baby-mamas whom he owes child-support...is really any "better" than letting him be married (and share health-care benefits, etc) to all of them?

Really, I'd be all for recognizing the ability to have care-taker relationships with multiple people. The only reason I doubt it will happen is practical: companies can't really be expected to pay for insurance for multiple wives, and it doesn't really solve the problem of who has the "final" word when it comes to important decisions, etc.

So, I suppose for men are stuck with a system of one primary "official" bride and then multiple mistresses or concubines, just as we've always been...

A Request

I got a request by e-mail that I give a shout-out to this blog with pictures of the 1604 Missale Romanum.

It's Not Supposed To Be Anything

Ideology and Identity

There was a post on Vox Nova a couple months ago that I've meant to briefly come back to here but never got around to it until now. The premise of the post was talking about Žižek on Christianity. I have no real interest in that in itself (I think Arturo Vasquez's conclusion that he's "the intellectual clown of the petit-bourgeois left" pretty much sums up my feelings there).

However, what I did think was worth pointing out was the question of Christianity-as-ideology vs genuine Christian faith:

If we look at the “ordinary” practice of Catholicism (or Christianity in general), we see that we are often caught up in externalities—the forms of being Catholic—and that the substance seems to be overlooked. Indeed, the radical core of the Christian message is often actively discounted: “Yes, scripture says X and the saints did Y, but what is really important for us is Z.” Far too often Christianity is functioning not as a liberation from the world, but as an ideological system that keeps Catholics chained to the world—in Zizekian terms, true faith is replaced by a Christian fantasy.

The external forms that masquerade as “true Catholicism” depend on whether one is “liberal” or “conservative” (suggesting that there are at least two ideological fantasies in play in the Church today): devotion to “traditional Catholicism” or “the spirit of Vatican II”, rubricism, inclusiveness, pro-life activism, social justice work, etc. A commonality emerges if we examine them from a Zizekian perspective. The psychological attractiveness lies in the reassurance that if I believe/do/act in these ways, then I will be a “real” Catholic (in the sense of a totalizing identity) and, perhaps even more importantly, the other—the Pope, the institutional Church, my pastor, the other members of my parish, the beloved community—will love me and accept me.

To me this seems highly relevant to the whole "Renegade Trads" idea. Some of you may have noticed that I recently added to the description of the blog in the side-bar a rejection of identity-politics. Obviously part of the problem, of the "inauthenticity" that many people (both within and without the Church) see in modern Christianity, is this sense that (especially in its conservative or reactionary forms; political labels both) it is just another sort of identity-craft for many, an ideological masquerade. To paraphrase what I wrote in the comments:

I myself have been mulling over for some time the paradox of the Church as Mystical Sinless Bride, a community which is set in opposition to The World, but which is also necessarily in the world and incarnate in the visible Institutional Church which is, being made up of mortal human sinners as it is, just as much a part of The World as any other polity. I think this paradox is similar to what I've written before about Ecclesia and Synagoga being distinct and yet one, and how such a simple dualism is not the structure of the symbolic syntax of Christianity.

So I would whole-heartedly agree: this is what needs to be transcended. I would also argue, however, that it never can be fully in this life. This is why the history of the Church is one of constant decay and then reform. The Saint will reject all sorts of identities only to feel a new one crystalizing around the identity of that reform or renunciation itself…and so then will need to “break out” again and again and again, constantly running from the self-alienation of objectifying in any identification with/in The World (as any identity is).

Often I notice this happening with myself. I have always been suspicious of adhering to any pre-packaged identity since I was a child, but several times my attempt to craft an identity around the very rejection of that or around outsider status...has simply hardened into a new sort of oppositional-identity, and defining oneself as what one isn't can be just as dangerous as defining oneself as what one is.

I even fear with the whole renegade trads thing that too often I think of my friends and allies and I as a special "sane yet orthodox and traditional" in-group set against the Novus Ordo conservative nutcases on the one hand, the crazy rad-trads on the other, and the progressivist heretics on both feet, in an "us-them" sort of contempt where only we have our priorities correct. So I must constantly remember to temper myself and others against that sort of arrogant and ultimately limiting vision.