Maybe like a lot of people, I find the choices for the next president of the USA disappointing. Even if I had bothered to ask for an absentee ballot--I'm registered at home in a very blue state and so I didn't think it mattered much--I don't know if I could vote for either of them.
October 31, 2016
October 27, 2016
The Dashboard Clock Changing Difficulty
This weekend the clocks turn back here in Italy. Here they call Standard Time and Daylight Savings Time ora solare and ora legale, respectively. 'Solar time' and 'legal time.' The change in the fall is a week before that in the USA. Not that this affects me much, but I do notice that regularly expected emails start to arrive at different times, and I have to remember the difference when tuning into radio programs from home. In the spring the difference is two weeks.
So I was reminded of a cute story. One of the senior friars would go through some stress twice a year because he could never remember how to change the time on his watch. It was of the inexpensive, digital variety. Brethren were consulted, manuals were searched for online, etc., and eventually the biannual crisis would be resolved.
So one time I suggested to him, given that his watch was of a very inexpensive kind, why didn't he just get another one. He could set one to EST and the other to DST, and then twice a year he would only have to switch watches.
The friar seemed to appreciate the solution. But then he raised the following objection:
"But next I will need two cars."
So I was reminded of a cute story. One of the senior friars would go through some stress twice a year because he could never remember how to change the time on his watch. It was of the inexpensive, digital variety. Brethren were consulted, manuals were searched for online, etc., and eventually the biannual crisis would be resolved.
So one time I suggested to him, given that his watch was of a very inexpensive kind, why didn't he just get another one. He could set one to EST and the other to DST, and then twice a year he would only have to switch watches.
The friar seemed to appreciate the solution. But then he raised the following objection:
"But next I will need two cars."
October 15, 2016
Lazy Capuchin Friars
One of the brethren brought to my attention this excerpt from William Dean Howells's Venetian Life.
The islands near Venice are all small, except the Giudecca (which is properly a part of the city), the Lido, and Murano. The Giudecca, from being anciently the bounds in which certain factious nobles were confined, was later laid out in pleasure-gardens, and built up with summer-palaces. The gardens still remain to some extent; but they are now chiefly turned to practical account in raising vegetables and fruits for the Venetian market, and the palaces have been converted into warehouses and factories. This island produces a variety of beggar, the most truculent and tenacious in all Venice, and it has a convent of lazy Capuchin friars, who are likewise beggars. To them belongs the church of the Redentore, which only the Madonnas of Bellini in the sacristy make worthy to be seen.
October 14, 2016
The Beard From Head To Heart
Recently I was in an email conversation about an occasional topic on this blog, Capuchin beards and Capuchin beard-growing.
One of the participants offered a link to an interesting Jewish take on the spiritual meaning of beard-growing. Rabbi Aron Moss writes:
When I was a kid the Chabad-Lubavitchers had a van that they would park in town in order to attract unobservant Jews and therein convert them. People called it the 'Mitzvah Tank.'
One of the participants offered a link to an interesting Jewish take on the spiritual meaning of beard-growing. Rabbi Aron Moss writes:
One of the greatest struggles in life is to live up to our ideals. ... Between theory and practice there is a huge gulf. It is one thing to have good intentions, but that is far from actually doing good. ... This is what the beard represents. The beard is hair that grows down from the head to the rest of the body. It is the bridge between mind and heart, thoughts and actions, theory and practice, good intentions and good deeds.Read the whole thing here.
When I was a kid the Chabad-Lubavitchers had a van that they would park in town in order to attract unobservant Jews and therein convert them. People called it the 'Mitzvah Tank.'
October 1, 2016
Quid Pro Quo
On a Saturday morning one of the General Councilors of the Order was mopping his room. As I passed in the hallway, he remarked that in the olden days the General Definitors (as they were until recently called) would bring along to Rome a brother famulus to assist them with such things.
As I thought upon this as I started to clean my own room--it is a duty explicitly defined by the Statutes of the General Curia and customarily fulfilled on a Saturday--I began to wonder if it wasn't because the Church has largely abandoned the Roman Canon (e.g. Eucharistic Prayer I), and so no longer prays pro famulis, that the brothers were no longer found ready to be famuli.
One gives himself to obedience for the sake of some spiritual benefit, of course. And if the spiritual benefit disappears, what use is the obedience?
As I thought upon this as I started to clean my own room--it is a duty explicitly defined by the Statutes of the General Curia and customarily fulfilled on a Saturday--I began to wonder if it wasn't because the Church has largely abandoned the Roman Canon (e.g. Eucharistic Prayer I), and so no longer prays pro famulis, that the brothers were no longer found ready to be famuli.
One gives himself to obedience for the sake of some spiritual benefit, of course. And if the spiritual benefit disappears, what use is the obedience?
September 26, 2016
Rant Follow Up
I received a couple of bits of salutary feedback on yesterday's post; I won't say 'fraternal correction,' just fraternal thoughts.
Though we can't always agree with or support certain choices of our brothers and sisters in religious life--or in the faith, for that matter--we can try to understand them and of course we are commanded by the Lord to love them. Probably just as many us around my age find some of the choices of our fathers and mothers in religious life hard to understand, so probably they found their spiritual forebears difficult as well. And probably when I get even older there will be younger friars who think I'm crazy and that my priorities are out of order.
To one degree or another, we are all conditioned by our experience and our historical moment in the world and in the Church as she exists in time (the Church Militant, if the traditional term is still retrievable), and this can have a great effect on the particular things we care about as well as our blind spots. I know well enough that there are aspects of the religious life at which I don't excel because of my deficits and the injuries of my own story.
I am proud of my resistance to the abuse of the liturgy and my unwillingness to participate in it. Once or twice I have had the happy occasion to suffer humiliation for it. But this doesn't mean I don't love or perhaps very much respect my brother. I understand that our choices arise in part from the complex places we come from. And I am grateful for all the ways I am sure that the brothers make similar allowances for me in the areas where my religious life is deficient and less than coherent.
Though we can't always agree with or support certain choices of our brothers and sisters in religious life--or in the faith, for that matter--we can try to understand them and of course we are commanded by the Lord to love them. Probably just as many us around my age find some of the choices of our fathers and mothers in religious life hard to understand, so probably they found their spiritual forebears difficult as well. And probably when I get even older there will be younger friars who think I'm crazy and that my priorities are out of order.
To one degree or another, we are all conditioned by our experience and our historical moment in the world and in the Church as she exists in time (the Church Militant, if the traditional term is still retrievable), and this can have a great effect on the particular things we care about as well as our blind spots. I know well enough that there are aspects of the religious life at which I don't excel because of my deficits and the injuries of my own story.
I am proud of my resistance to the abuse of the liturgy and my unwillingness to participate in it. Once or twice I have had the happy occasion to suffer humiliation for it. But this doesn't mean I don't love or perhaps very much respect my brother. I understand that our choices arise in part from the complex places we come from. And I am grateful for all the ways I am sure that the brothers make similar allowances for me in the areas where my religious life is deficient and less than coherent.
September 25, 2016
(Franciscan) Liturgical Abuse Rant
Recently I've had some occasions to think about liturgical abuse.
Some of it, I think, is just pride and vainglory on the part of clergy. I need to do things my way. I need to get my theological or, horribile dictu, political tagline or slogan into the Mass, etc. But like most expressions of clerical vainglory and pride, these are often more laughable than dangerous.
But there's another form of liturgical abuse I've encountered in my Catholic life, in certain religious houses, schools, and parishes. It's the liturgical abuse that derives from the intuition that the liturgy as the Church presents it does not properly express who we are as a community, and therefore has to be adjusted or changed to fit our needs and identity.
Perhaps my experience of life as a Franciscan friar provides an example.
Some of it, I think, is just pride and vainglory on the part of clergy. I need to do things my way. I need to get my theological or, horribile dictu, political tagline or slogan into the Mass, etc. But like most expressions of clerical vainglory and pride, these are often more laughable than dangerous.
But there's another form of liturgical abuse I've encountered in my Catholic life, in certain religious houses, schools, and parishes. It's the liturgical abuse that derives from the intuition that the liturgy as the Church presents it does not properly express who we are as a community, and therefore has to be adjusted or changed to fit our needs and identity.
Perhaps my experience of life as a Franciscan friar provides an example.
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