Now I know this is silly stuff, but I had to post this one. In the post before last I was writing about the unicorns, as a symbol, of course, of junk from the so-called New Age movement that creeps into our Catholic Christian religion.
Today I noticed evidence that Jesus himself was against the unicorns. I was, just for practice, saying my prayers in Latin when I noticed verse 22 (21 in some numberings) of psalm 22:
Save me from the mouth of the lion, my afflicted soul from the horns of the wild oxen! (RSV)
In Latin, however, the verse reads:
Salva me ex ore leonis, et a cornibus unicornium humilitatem meam.
Now the Douay Old Testament, trying to be faithful to Jerome's Latin if not artful English, renders the verse thusly:
Save me from the lion's mouth; and my lowness from the horns of the unicorns.
Both Matthew and Mark portray Jesus praying this psalm from the Cross. Therefore we can conclude that Jesus was emphatically against the unicorns.
Showing posts with label New Age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Age. Show all posts
October 13, 2006
October 12, 2006
Quote of the Day
One of the friars here is taking a course in spiritual direction, and he feels that the images of God expressed there sometimes tend toward the pagan or New Age "spiritualities." We were talking about it, and the quote of the day came out:
"Christian prayer does have a certain specificity; we pray to the Transcendent God that Jesus called his Father, from within our adoption into Christ's relationship to Him, through the Holy Spirit. And there's no room for unicorns in there."
"Christian prayer does have a certain specificity; we pray to the Transcendent God that Jesus called his Father, from within our adoption into Christ's relationship to Him, through the Holy Spirit. And there's no room for unicorns in there."
May 5, 2006
Liturgical Dance
I'm not surprised that our slightly pompous post from yesterday produced some comments, though it didn't turn out to be the flame bait I had thought it might be.
In one comment our Franciscan friend Jason challenged us to render comment on the Gospel procession from somewhere called St. Nicholas. Apparently their little video was circulating a while back and drawing the ire of the more conservative catholic bloggers. Check it out here.
Now I don't know the place or its background, so it's dangerous to make any claims about it based on this little video. But it is true that this general question of "liturgical dance" produces a lot of strong feelings. For some it is a liberating expression of joy. Others see it as a hippie accretion bordering on sacrilege. So what can we say? Is this sort of thing justified, or even just o.k.? Well, yes and no.
If you haven't seen anything like it, I would recommend The Dancing Church, a video of African Poor Clare sisters put together by Paulist Father Thomas Kane. Here you can see liturgical dance working as worship. It works because it is an inculturation of the Gospel into a dancing culture in which dance is integral to prayer and praise.
It doesn't work so well when north Americans of European ancestry try to do it. Why? Because we come from the culture that produced the sober and understated Roman liturgy we all know and love. When we start trying to do liturgical dance, it's not a legitimate inculturation, but an effort to invent our own liturgy, to do what we feel like doing. And thus it becomes one more symptom of the greater problem (brought to us via the New Age, I think) that we can invent our own religion and worship according to our tastes and fashions.
So if you're an African Poor Clare, praise God in your dance. But if you're a white, suburban European-American, get over yourself, and, as the Beastie Boys put it, stop "dancing around like you think you're Janet Jackson."
In one comment our Franciscan friend Jason challenged us to render comment on the Gospel procession from somewhere called St. Nicholas. Apparently their little video was circulating a while back and drawing the ire of the more conservative catholic bloggers. Check it out here.
Now I don't know the place or its background, so it's dangerous to make any claims about it based on this little video. But it is true that this general question of "liturgical dance" produces a lot of strong feelings. For some it is a liberating expression of joy. Others see it as a hippie accretion bordering on sacrilege. So what can we say? Is this sort of thing justified, or even just o.k.? Well, yes and no.
If you haven't seen anything like it, I would recommend The Dancing Church, a video of African Poor Clare sisters put together by Paulist Father Thomas Kane. Here you can see liturgical dance working as worship. It works because it is an inculturation of the Gospel into a dancing culture in which dance is integral to prayer and praise.
It doesn't work so well when north Americans of European ancestry try to do it. Why? Because we come from the culture that produced the sober and understated Roman liturgy we all know and love. When we start trying to do liturgical dance, it's not a legitimate inculturation, but an effort to invent our own liturgy, to do what we feel like doing. And thus it becomes one more symptom of the greater problem (brought to us via the New Age, I think) that we can invent our own religion and worship according to our tastes and fashions.
So if you're an African Poor Clare, praise God in your dance. But if you're a white, suburban European-American, get over yourself, and, as the Beastie Boys put it, stop "dancing around like you think you're Janet Jackson."
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