The patron saint of bloggers

[Rubens, St. Sebastian, c. 1614]

Various patron saints of bloggers have been proposed--for example, Ste Thérèse de Lisieux, St François de Sales, St Augustine of Hippo, and my second choice, St Expeditus--but none of these get at the heart of the blogger's experience.

I nominate St Sebastian. 

Anyone who's ever blogged knows about the slings and arrows of outrageous comments. Those arrows didn't kill Sebastian, however. He kept right on speaking his mind, and was eventually clubbed to death for his efforts.

I'm not complaining about any arrows whizzing in my direction. None are in the vicinity, since I haven't written anything about sex, religion, or politics (or the heady brew comprising all three) for months.

I've watched as arrows have temporarily downed friends, however.

I'm not talking about polite disagreement. Differing opinions, charitably expressed, are the lifeblood of civil discourse. Even opinions based on misinformation and lies can be part of civil discourse (who among us has never been misinformed or deceived?), if we--bloggers and blog-readers alike--are willing to change our opinions as the evidence requires.

I'm talking about rants, name-calling, snarkiness, and personal attacks. The pain they inflict is real, even if the shooters are obviously ignorant or unhinged (as nearly all of them are).

I'm grateful to the many bloggers and columnists who continue to write well-researched, thoughtful, non-hysterical opinion pieces. I'm especially grateful to those whose search for truth and wisdom occasionally leads them beyond party orthodoxy--whatever their party--thus laying themselves open to all those archers with personality disorders.

If you intrepid bloggers need a saint, Sebastian's your man. But perhaps you are a saint, willing to take the arrows as an unpleasant side effect of speaking truth. Thank you.

And may God protect you from the clubs.

Scary Nuns Terrify Vatican

Catherine of Siena explains
to Gregory XI why he
should move to Rome

The Vatican has always been scared of forceful nuns. Even (and perhaps especially) the three female doctors of the church made prelates nervous.

In the fourteenth century, Catherine of Siena meddled in papal politics and brought the Avignon pope back to Rome.

In the sixteenth century, Teresa of Avila survived an investigation by the Spanish Inquisition of her mystical writings (and Jewish ancestry). 

In the nineteenth century, Thérèse of Lisieux disregarded the commands of her priest and Vatican officials until the pope gave in and let her do what she wanted.

And yesterday, following a two-year investigation, 80 percent of American nuns came under Vatican fire.

The Washington Post reported that

the Vatican has launched a crackdown on the umbrella group that represents most of America’s 55,000 Catholic nuns, saying that the group was not speaking out strongly enough against gay marriage, abortion and women’s ordination. Rome also chided the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) for sponsoring conferences that featured “a prevalence of certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”
     ... One of the groups singled out in the criticism is Network, a social justice lobby created by Catholic sisters 40 years ago that continues to play a leading role in pushing progressive causes on Capitol Hill.

Interestingly, yesterday's Post also carried a short article by Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the maligned Network. Campbell, writing in honor of Network's 40th anniversary, described the group's activities as

lobbying our elected officials to consider the needs of people living in poverty, the left-out, the marginalized in our society. We have worked on many issues of economic justice, immigration, peace building, health care reform and the environment. We have studied the adverse impact of welfare reform especially in a down economy. We have partnered with Iraqis in helping them to build lives and an economy in post-sanction, post-invasion Iraq. We have partnered with thousands of people around the country in articulating what is the common good that we seek in order to realize the promise of our Constitution.

Even as the Vatican was worrying about the self-sacrificing sisters, yet another priest was placed on administrative leave for sexual misconduct. A third article in yesterday's Post noted that

from 2004 until last year, [this priest] was director of the [Northern Virginia diocese's] Office of Child Protection and Safety, which trains church employees and volunteers to spot abuse and monitors youth activities “to ensure that all contact with young people is appropriate,” its Web site says.

Yes, every organization has its bad apples. But this particular organization, remember, is the one that did not punish Boston's Cardinal Law after his part in that city's sex scandal went public, but rather rewarded him with a cushy appointment in Rome and, last year, a lavish 80th birthday celebration.

As I understand the Gospels, Jesus had a lot in common with the nuns. He identified with the poor and spent a large percentage of his workday on health care. He sent women on apostolic missions (see Jn 4, the woman at the well, and Jn 20, Mary Magdalene in the garden). He protected children. "If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me," he thundered, "it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea" (Mt 18.6).

Apparently Jesus's priorities are very different from the Vatican's.

Want to speak up in a language the Vatican understands? Donate now to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious or to Network.

For further reading: The Vatican's latest crackdown is covered thoroughly and well by Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times and by Joshua J. McElwee in the National Catholic Reporter.

Farewell to a merry old soul

Saturday afternoon "Mom" Wilma Elliott's 17 descendants, 10 of the in-laws, and several dozen friends gathered to say farewell. The 95-year-old matriarch of the Elliott clan (into which our daughter Molly married) once explained to me why she survived so long beyond her husband and my parents, who died 15 years ago. "I was the one who was smoked and pickled," she said. (She stopped smoking when she was 90, but she continued to enjoy her afternoon glass of bourbon.)

At her memorial service we sang a few of Wilma's favorite hymns and listened to some readings from Scripture. Susan Elliott, our granddaughter and Wilma's great-granddaughter, played "Ashokan Farewell" on her violin. Then friends and family members stepped up to the mike and told stories. (Wilma's wedding-day message to her granddaughter-in-law: "The Elliott men are stubborn, but they can be finessed.") If the departed keep tabs on us or at least drop by now and then, I expect Wilma enjoyed the service as much as we did.

So I want to qualify my enthusiasm for a thought-provoking article that several of my Facebook friends have linked to: Thomas G. Long's New York Times op-ed piece, "Chronicle of a Death We Can't Accept." Long thinks that many of our contemporary memorial services miss the point: the body of the deceased should attend the funeral. He writes:

A corpse is a stark reminder that human beings are inescapably embodied creatures, and that a life is the sum of what has been performed and spoken by the body — a mixture of promises made and broken, deeds done and undone, joys evoked and pain inflicted. When we lift the heavy weight of the coffin and carry the dead over the tile floor of the crematory or across the muddy cemetery to the open grave, we bear public witness that this was a person with a whole and embodied life, one that, even in its ambiguity and brokenness, mattered and had substance. To carry the dead all the way to the place of farewell also acknowledges the reality that they are leaving us now, that they eventually will depart even from our frail communal memory as they travel on to whatever lies beyond.

I appreciate Long's insistence on embodiment. I like his emphasis on physical reality. I welcome his lack of sentimentality. His article was appropriate for All Hallows Eve and El Día de los Muertos, the days it was published online and in the print edition. There is a time for gathering around an open grave, for lowering the heavy casket (or small urn), and for scattering handfuls of dirt; and these rituals should not be skipped. Too often we Americans trade hard truths for reassuring illusions.

But today, All Souls Day, there are other truths to consider as well. There is also a time for "a soul cake: an apple, a pear, a plum, a cherry--any good thing to make us all merry" (not Sting's vapid new version, by the way: insist on Peter, Paul, and Mary's classic). Wilma's family said the hard good-byes in September, when she died. When we gathered on Saturday, it was to celebrate the love that is stronger than death."Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning" (Psalm 30:5). For those who believe in the resurrection of the body, the joy--even more than the corpse--is a sign of physical reality.

Saint Patrick de l'Irlande

Tomorrow we are going to a St. Patrick's Day dinner of French and Italian food.

This makes perfect sense: tradition has it that the saint's grandmother was from la Touraine, the region made famous a millennium later by its chateaux; that Patrick studied for several years on a Mediterranean island near present-day Cannes; that he assisted the bishop of Auxerre in what would become Burgundy wine country; and that he once visited the Tuscan Pope Leo the Great in Rome (though it's possible that some of these legends confuse Patrick with Palladius, a Gaulois who also became a bishop in Ireland in the fifth century).

In honor of l'évangélisateur gaulois de l'Irlande, I am bringing two loaves of home-baked French bread to our fête patricienne. I recommend Mark Bittman's recipe, which I won't post because you really need to go out and buy his book tomorrow, or you could click on the link below and just do it.

But first, enjoy this article from the Telegraph: "French Still Like Their Daily Bread Fresh."


Oh yes, I almost forgot. Would you believe we had leftovers again tonight? The cabbage/beet/orange salad. The black bean stew, this time with some turkey sausage added to the rest of the emoluments. And the Brussels sprouts. Everything is now used up. Let the St. Patrick's Day feast begin!

Stanley Fish on Roland Burris and St. Augustine

In today's "Think Again" column, Stanley Fish refers to St. Augustine and the Donatists in arguing that Roland Burris deserves to be seated in the U.S. Senate.

Think ex opere operato, history buffs. Your priest may have been ordained by a heretic or scoundrel, but he's still a priest and the sacraments he administers are still valid. (Heave a sigh of relief, loyal Catholics.) As Fish points out,

The legitimacy of an appointment can be either a procedural or a moral matter. If it is a procedural matter, authority is conferred by the right credentials, and that’s that. If it is a moral matter – only the good can be truly authoritative (this was John Milton’s position) – authority is always precarious, and the structures of government and law are always in danger of being dissolved.

Fish does not tell the rest of the Donatists' story, however. Though St. Augustine acknowledged the validity of their appointments, he also called for civil penalties against them. The Donatists were wrong, he wrote, and if they could not be persuaded to return to the true church, they should be forced to do so. With his encouragement, churches were closed, adherents were fined, and leaders were exiled.

Presumably St. Augustine, while supporting Roland Burris's appointment, would have no objection to impeaching and imprisoning Governor Rod Blagojevich.

How to be a saint, though married

Want to be a saint? Your best bet is to become a priest or a nun. It also helps if somebody kills you violently. If you're married, however, you might as well forget about sainthood, though you raise your chances if (1) you give up sex and/or (2) all your children are celibate.

This weekend the parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux will be beatified. (Beatification is the church's recognition that you are in heaven; canonization, which requires an additional miracle, recognizes you as a saint. You have to be beatified in order to be canonized.) Thérèse's parents, Louis Martin and Zélie Guérin, had hoped to be monastics. After their wedding, says James Martin, SJ, in "His Wife's a Saint, So Is Her Husband" (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 17, 2008), they "refrained from sex for 10 months.... Eventually, a frustrated Zélie escorted her husband to a local priest, who assured them that raising children was a sacred activity."

During the remaining 18 years of their marriage, Zélie gave birth to nine children. Four died; the other five all became nuns. Even the fiercely ascetic St. Jerome would have approved. He's the tortured translator who wrote this in a long letter to a female friend:

I praise wedlock, I praise marriage, but it is because they give me virgins. I gather the rose from the thorns, the gold from the earth, the pearl from the shell.

Letter XXII, to Eustochium, para. 20

Jerome would also have approved of the first married couple in history to be beatified together--Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi, who were beatified only seven years ago. According to an article in the National Catholic Reporter, the Quattrocchis had four children. Three joined religious orders, and the fourth never married. As for Luigi and Maria, for over half of their 46 years of marriage they lived sexlessly as brother and sister.

These beatifications happened several years after former Newsweek religion writer Kenneth L.Woodward published Making Saints: How The Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes A Saint, Who Doesn't, And Why. In a fascinating chapter called "Sanctity and Sexuality," he tells about the 1987 World Synod of Bishops, convened "to discuss the role of the laity in the church and in the world" (340). At the synod, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints presented a list of lay possibilities for sainthood. Woodward summarizes what happened:

The congregation, I observed, had nearly three years to come up with appropriate candidates to beatify or canonize during a synod devoted exclusively to the laity. And in the end, the congregation delivered two virginal rape victims, another young martyr who never got the chance to marry, a lifelong bachelor, and a man who left his wife and children behind to go to the missions.

"The message couldn't be more obvious," I said [to a consultant to the congregation]. "When it comes to sanctity, sex is still something to be avoided and celibacy is preferable to marriage. What good is all the talk about the sanctity of marriage if the congregation cannot come up with even one example of a holy and happily married saint?" (343)

Well, now we have our examples. The Quattrocchis and the Martins aren't saints yet, but they're on the way. And someday even you might be a married saint. Just give up sex, and be sure your children do too.

Holy Epiphanius, pray for us

Years ago while looking up something in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd edition, I discovered a saint who sounded strangely familiar--Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis (ca 315 - 403). I liked the closing words of the description so much that I copied them on an index card.

And then the index card went astray, and Oxford published an updated edition of the Dictionary, and some misguided editor left out the charming lines. I was bereft.

Until today when, going through a stack of old books at Mr Neff's office, I saw a dusty copy of the Oxford Dictionary. Yes! It was the 2nd edition! The words were there! And here they are. If you know anyone like this, now you'll know that he or she comes from a long and saintly tradition.

His unbending rigidity,
his want of judgement,
and his complete inability to understand any who differed from him
were reflected in his writings
no less than in his life.

Feast day, 12 May.

A Little Daily Wisdom

Paraclete Press has just published a book of daily devotions edited by Carmen Acevedo Butcher, A Little Daily Wisdom: Christian Women Mystics. I'm not a fan of the devotional genre, though I've written two such books myself--but this one is unusual. There are no canned prayers, no chirpy little inspirational thoughts, no Scripture texts taken out of context, and no--thanks be to God--application questions. Instead, each day offers a few lines, freshly translated, from a woman writer who lived sometime between 1098 (the birth year of St. Hildegard of Bingen) and 1582 (the death year of St. Teresa of Avila).

When I first picked up the book, I narcissistically turned to my own birth date and read words by Gertrude the Great that seem to turn today's common wisdom on its head. Acknowledging the close relationship between body and soul, she sees an inverse relationship between them:

When your body is touched and troubled by pain, it’s like your soul is bathed in air and sunlight, coming to it through the painful body, and this gives the soul a wonderful clarity. The greater the pain, or the more general the suffering, the more purification or clarification goes on in the soul.

I've long been familiar with the slogan mens sana in corpore sano, "a healthy mind in a healthy body"--I think it was the motto of a school I once attended--that goes back to the Roman poet Juvenal. I've always thought it meant that the healthier the mind (and the soul), the healthier the body, and vice versa. Want to increase your resistance to disease? Practice gratitude! Want to lift depression? Exercise!

But Gertrude the Great turns this relationship around. I doubt if she ever suggests that a sick soul produces a healthy body (though I haven't read the whole book yet), and yet here she seems to be saying that a troubled body produces a pure soul. Would Juvenal approve?

Possibly. I checked out the source of his bon mot, and it turns out that he wasn't expecting good health and comfort to follow him all the days of his life:

It is to be prayed that the mind be sound in a sound body.
Ask for a brave soul that lacks the fear of death,
which places the length of life last among nature’s blessings,
which is able to bear whatever kind of sufferings,
does not know anger, lusts for nothing and believes
the hardships and savage labors of Hercules better than
the satisfactions, feasts, and feather bed of an Eastern king.

Short life, suffering, hardship, hard work--these are givens, and one can only pray for the strength of mind and body to endure them. That's a long way from my usual way of thinking, but it's not so far from Gertrude's call to endurance as a means of purification:

This is especially true of the painful problems of the heart. When these are endured, humbly and patiently, they give the soul a splendid luster, the nearer and better and closer they touch it.

I like the way Gertrude sums up her counsel. After observing that suffering leads to clarity, she suggests another route to the same end:

But remember that kind actions—more than anything else—cause the soul to shine with brilliance.

Kind actions under any circumstances are virtuous. Kind actions while suffering are saintly.

In my experience, most devotional books do not plant little ideas in my mind that keep popping out and making me examine my assumptions. This one does.

I have only one minor complaint about A Little Daily Wisdom. It has those dumb little fold-back flaps that keep the book from lying flat but definitely do not work to mark one's place. I've hacked off the front flap and am using it as a bookmark. If the back flap keeps getting in the way I'll hack it off too, though I hate to do so because it bears a lovely picture of the author, plus the information that she has a Ph.D. in medieval studies, teaches at Shorter College, and has written books about Benedict (of Nursia) and Hildegard of Bingen. It also gives directions to her website.
.

Come Be My Light

I have begun reading the controversial book about Mother Teresa’s struggles, Come Be My Light (Doubleday, 2007). The author, Brian Kolodiejchuk, MC, sets her private writings in their historical, religious, and biographical context. His description of the mystical tradition of interior darkness, especially as described by the sixteenth-century saint John of the Cross, is both accurate and troubling. Here are some excerpts about “the painful purifications one undergoes before reaching union with God”:

They are accomplished in two phases: the “night of the senses” and the “night of the spirit.” In the first night one is freed from attachment to sensory satisfactions and drawn into the prayer of contemplation....

Having passed through the first night, one may then be led by God into the “night of the spirit,” to be purged from the deepest roots of one’s imperfections. A state of extreme aridity accompanies this purification, and one feels rejected and abandoned by God. The experience can become so intense that one feels as if heading toward eternal perdition....Prayer is difficult, almost impossible; spiritual counsel practically of no avail; and various exterior trials may add to this pain. By means of this painful purification, the disciple is led to total detachment from all created things and to a lofty degree of union with Christ, becoming a fit instrument in His hands and serving Him purely and disinterestedly. (22–23)

I find it hard to reconcile this kind of mysticism with an incarnate God who is the source and redeemer of “created things.” But perhaps I am misreading “total detachment.”

Mother Teresa did not try to escape created things. She did not reject the physical world in favor of spiritual experience. Her lifelong ministry to the poorest of the poor plunged her into more physical reality than most of us could bear.

Of the quantity of drink

"Every one hath his proper gift from God, one after this manner and another after that" (1 Cor 7:7). It is with some hesitation, therefore, that we determine the measure of nourishment for others. However, making allowance for the weakness of the infirm, we think one hemina* of wine a day is sufficient for each one. But to whom God granteth the endurance of abstinence, let them know that they will have their special reward.

If the circumstances of the place, or the work, or the summer's heat should require more, let that depend on the judgment of the Superior, who must above all things see to it, that excess or drunkenness do not creep in.

Although we read that wine is not at all proper for monks, yet, because monks in our times cannot be persuaded of this, let us agree to this, at least, that we do not drink to satiety, but sparingly; because "wine maketh even wise men fall off" (Sir 19:2). But where the poverty of the place will not permit the aforesaid measure to be had, but much less, or none at all, let those who live there bless God and murmur not.

This we charge above all things, that they live without murmuring.

Holy Rule of St. Benedict, chapter XL

*A hemina is equal to half a sextary. Now you know.
(A sextary is probably about the same as a British pint, or 20 ounces.)

St. Blaise, healer of throats

When I was lamenting the apparent absence of festive saints in the early church, I overlooked one thing some of the early Christians did very well. Despite their willingness for the body to be hungry, tired, cold, lonely, and nonreproductive, they did not think it should be ill.

Today's patron saint, Bishop Blaise of Armenia, was a physician. OK, he was a hermit, and he lived in a cave and walked on water, so he's not quite the earthy, festive saint I'm hoping to find. Still, he must have loved the created world, because he had a widespread reputation for healing animals. Thrown in jail during one of the early-fourth-century persecutions, he also healed his fellow prisoners, including a child who was choking on a fish bone.

A few years ago in early February, I listened as our bishop told stories about St. Blaise to a group of RCIA candidates (people who are preparing to join the Catholic church). St. Blaise, he said, is the patron saint of people with throat ailments, and every year on February 3 the church offers a blessing of the throats. The bishop explained that he would use two candles to make the sign of the cross, and any of us who wished to do so could come forward for the blessing.

At that point a young red-headed electrician could stand it no longer. "Who thinks up this stuff?" he exclaimed.

A lot of saints' stories are pretty strange, and a lot of saints appear to have needed medication that hadn't been invented yet. I'm glad to know, though, that St. Blaise valued the earthly life and physical comfort of a child in distress.