"Feed The Birds" - Mary Poppins & The Synod On The Family

I just love the song "Feed The Birds", a beautiful little paean to compassion from the movie Mary Poppins:

All around the Cathedral the Saints and Apostles
Look down as she sells her wares
Although you can't see it, you know that they're smiling
Each time someone shows that he cares

It's evident, I think, that it's compassion for the "little old bird woman" herself, and not merely for the birds, that brings joy to the Saints and Apostles.
     Below I also provide a few thoughts on why the Bishops gathered in the Synod on the Family would do well to watch Mary Poppins before they do anything else.

     I think it could only help if the bishops assembled in Rome for the Synod on the Family took a couple hours off to watch the movie Mary Poppins.  Since they seem interested in talking about everything but "The Family", taking a little film break can't hurt, but more than that, they need to see this movie.

     I say this, by the way, as someone who is decidedly not a Disney fan.  My children saw few Disney movies growing up, none more than once, except this one.  Sure, it has it's flaws (not the least of which is Dick Van Dyke's atrocious attempt at a cockney accent), and it's share of Disney goofiness, but there's something beautiful about it.  At the beginning, the family is falling apart, and moving in opposite directions: the father, Mr. Banks, is so caught up in his career that barely notices his surroundings, including his wife and children; Mrs. Banks devotes most of her attention to political advocacy, and the neglected children, Jane and Michael, respond by running wild and tormenting the governesses to whom the parents leave the task of "molding" their "breed".  That is, until Mary Poppins becomes their new governess.

Jane Darwell as the bird woman in Mary Poppins

     Much of the fun in the film comes the magical adventures the children experience in the company of Mary Poppins: jumping into sidewalk drawings, visiting a house where laughing causes them to float up to the ceiling (and where they can only come back to earth by thinking sad thoughts), flying up through the chimney and dancing on the London rooftops, and so on.  The most magical thing Mary Poppins does, however, is to bring the divided family back together . . . and then take herself out of the picture, sacrificing her own feelings so she won't come between them.  The movie ends with Parents and Children united in love, and Mary Poppins, the catalyst, quietly moving on to her next assignment.

     It certainly couldn't hurt the Synod Fathers to take a little break from their deliberations, where, if we can trust the news reports, they seem to be paying little attention to anything that could reunite the family.  After the film, they might want to take a look at the Book of Malachi, whose closing verse starts with the same theme we see at the end of Mary Poppins :

And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers (Malachi 4:6)

But that's not the end; the second half of the verse, the final words in the Old Testament, leave us with a warning:

lest I come and smite the land with a curse.

Let us please pray that the Lord grant our shepherds the wisdom to heed His Word.

What's Latin Got To Do With It?

   Thus the Roman tongue is now first and foremost a sacred tongue, which resounds in the Sacred Liturgy, the halls of divinity, and the documents of the Apostolic See.  In this same tongue you yourselves again and again address a sweet salutation to the Queen of Heaven, your Mother, and to your Father who reigns on high.  This tongue is the key that unlocks for you the sources of history.  Nearly all the Roman and Christian past preserved for us, in inscriptions, writings and books, with some exceptions of later centuries, wears the vesture of the Latin tongue.

 - His Holiness Pope Pius XII's Address to the Student Youth of Rome, January 30, 1949   

     Over the last couple of days I have been watching two gentlemen going back in forth in the comboxes about the Pope’s decision not to use Latin as the official language of the upcoming Synod of Bishops.  They both make some interesting points about the place and importance of the Latin language in the life of the Church. Their spirited discussion has got me thinking not just about Latin, but about some of the distinctive features of Catholicism. 

The Pagan Roman Vergil guides the Christian Dante on his way to Paradise

A God of the Particulars . . .

     Don’t get me wrong, I have some definite opinions about Latin (after all, teaching it has been my main source of income for the past three decades), both in general and in a Church context, but I’d like to use the discussion of the language as a springboard to a broader topic.  And, really, it’s something of a paradox.  I agree with Chesterton when he says: “It [Catholicism] is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.”  Catholicism gives us an allegiance that is infinitely larger than those other things that try to make a claim on us, such as political parties and ideologies, nations, athletic teams and any number of false gods, including The Conventional Wisdom; and it is not just something larger, but something truer, something that is infinitely true, because it is our connection to the Infinite Omnipotent Creator.  At the same time, one of its unique features among the world’s religions is its interest in particulars, following the lead of its Lord, of whom I wrote in another post:

. . . He is a God of particulars.  He chose a particular people to whom he first revealed himself in order that he might incarnate himself among them in the person of the God-Man Jesus of Nazareth; he carefully chose and prepared Mary as the human mother of Jesus; he likewise chose and prepared particular individuals such as Peter and Paul to carry forward the mission of Jesus.

The Church has carefully preserved, in Scripture, in creeds, and in the broader tradition these names and the names of many others: and not only Saints, but Sinners such as the various Herods and Pontius Pilate.  The Gospels usually don’t simply tell us that Jesus entered a town, but that he entered, say, Tiberias, or Betheny.  We are told about real, individual men and women in well-known places that you can see, where you can walk down the same streets.  And it doesn’t end with Biblical figures and events: the Catholic Church has carefully preserved not only the names and stories of thousands of Saints over the past two millennia, but actual pieces of their bodies as tokens that they were real people, not myths or abstractions. 

. . . And Yet Universal

     It may seem like a contradiction that Catholicism is at the same time the only truly Universal Religion and one uniquely focused on individual people and concrete things. But the living center of it all is the Incarnation, where the Second Person of the Trinity, the Eternal Word, becomes the Man Jesus of Nazareth: Infinite God in a finite body.  It is the glorified body of the Risen Christ that I find most telling here, particularly the passage where Jesus shows himself to the “doubting” Apostle Thomas: 

St. Thomas examining the wounds of Christ

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:27-28) 

Who would have expected the Glorified Body, the eternal perfected Body, to include the horrible wounds inflicted on the first body here on Earth?  

     It seems to me that the Church, Christ’s Mystical Body on Earth, follows the model of the Master in incorporating into itself many of those things that happen to it along the way.  As St. Paul says:

  

We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28) 

I’m not saying that the various experiences and traditions (including liturgical languages) that have been part of the history of the Church enjoy the same status as Christ’s Wounds. Rather, in the passage about Thomas we see a supreme example of a pattern that is reflected in lesser things as well. It does seem that God doesn’t want anything to go to waste, and that He can use those things to join us more closely to Himself and to each other.  Just look at how the stories of the Saints, from the very earliest days of the Church, have been incorporated into her liturgical life, and how devotion to them has brought countless Catholics closer to their Lord.  The same can be said of many devotional practices. 

What’s Latin Got to Do With It?

     This is where the discussion of Latin comes in.  It’s true that it wasn’t the first liturgical language of the Church (and for much of the Church never has been).  In the Western Church, however, the Latin Church, it replaced Greek within the first few centuries, when there was still a Roman Empire.  For the past fifteen centuries Latin was the language in which great theologians (St. Augustine, St. Thomas) formulated their thoughts, and the medium through which Catholics, including most of the greatest Saints, prayed to their God and heard His Word.  

St. Augustine of Hippo, last of the Romans

     That common language, on a purely human level, is a tangible way that we share in their experience.  I often relate to people, when discussing the study of Latin in a purely secular context, my experience studying English as a graduate student.  I found that in the work of authors writing in English prior to the mid-twentieth there always seemed to be a sort of substrata of allusions and knowing nods to the literary tradition of the Greeks and Romans, and a rich admixture of Latinisms; most of this was invisible to the vast majority of students who had never studied Latin (never mind Greek) or classical literature.  There was an entire dimension to the literature they were reading that they simply missed.  Consider how much more profound a loss that is in the context of the Church, whose traditions an institutions go back to a time before any language we could call English existed.   

     Of course, the Church is not merely an institution, and our predecessors in the faith are not merely our forebears: they are our fellow Christians, participants right now from their eternal heavenly home in the same Church, which is the Mysticum Corpus of Christ our Lord. If we venerate bits of their bone and tiny snips of their clothing, surely we must derive some spiritual benefit from praying the same prayers, not just the same thoughts but the exact same words, and singing the same songs as they did?  We are both body and soul, and we need tangible things to help us understand spiritual realities.  We can’t survive on abstractions: that’s why Our Lord has given us Sacraments.  The Latin language has been one of those tangible things for most of the history of the Western Church, one of the most prominent of those things (sociologists call them “identity markers”) that help us understand who we are and with whom we belong.

Look Before Leaping

     As I said above, this is not merely about Latin, because the gentleman is correct who said that the Church has changed her liturgical language in the past, and may do so again.  No human language is essential for Salvation, and the Church will go on with or without it (Matthew 16:18); also, she continually needs to assess whether the things she has picked up on the on the way are really helpful for her mission (Ecclesia reformans et semper reformanda, if I may indulge in an antique tongue). At the same time she must also consider long and hard before jettisoning things that have a long history of uniting those of us in the Church Militant with our predecessors who are now in the Church Triumphant, and beyond them to "Our Father who reigns on high," as Pope Pius XII reminds us.  Whatever happens in the upcoming Synod (things being what they are, it makes sense to conduct the proceedings in some other language), we would be unwise to abandon completely the Language of our Fathers (Lingua Patrum) too quickly.

(This Throwback was first published in January of this year.)

Blessed Paul VI, The Synod, And Pope Francis

     Now that we're in the run-up to Part II of last year's, um, "eventful" Synod on the Family, and especially after Pope Francis' reform of the annulment process the other day, it seemed a good time to re-run this piece from October 25th, 2014, for Throwback Thursday.

     Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini is reported to have said at the time that St. John XXIII didn't realize what a "hornet's nest" he was stirring up in calling the Second Vatican Council.  A few short years later, Montini,  as Pope Paul VI, found himself presiding over that very hornet's nest.  He faced the Herculean task of trying to preserve the unity of the Church in the face of the forces that had been unleashed, both during the council and in the years that followed. Pope Paul's approach seemed to be based on the maxim (often erroneously attributed to St. Augustine): "Unity in essential things, liberty in doubtful things, charity in all things".  Pope John had quoted it in his first encyclical,  Ad Petri Cathedram [here], and Pope Paul took it to heart.  He allowed everyone to have his say when possible, which tended to create the appearance (and, quite frankly, often the reality) of disarray in the Church.  Where he judged it necessary, on the other hand, he firmly restated the traditional teaching: on priestly celibacy [here], for instance, the all-male clergy [here], and most famously, human sexuality in his most well-known encyclical, Humanae Vitae [here]. As a rule he refrained from condemnations, denunciations, and other seemingly uncharitable gestures.

Blessed Paul VI at the closing ceremony of the Second Vatican Council        

       Pope Paul is now Blessed Paul VI, having been beatified last weekend [19 October 2014] at the conclusion of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family.  Speaking of which, one can't help but agree with the numerous commentators who have observed that this synod was not just Extraordinary, but extraordinary.  There's no need for me to recap all the hijinx that took place; let it suffice to say that such public disarray in the upper reaches of the Church has not been seen the pontificate of, yes, Paul VI.

          There are some interesting connections here.  There has been a lot of speculation as to Pope Francis's position on the controverted issues and controversial maneuvering at the synod.  He gave Cardinal Kasper the opportunity to run with his long-time project of loosening up the rules preventing divorced Catholics who have remarried without annulment from receiving communion, and appointed administrators for the synod who finagled to make that and other liberalizing proposals seem much more agreeable to the assembled fathers than they actually were; he also put more traditionally-minded prelates such as South African Cardinal Napier in a position to counter the machinations of Kasper and his crew.  As the synod unfolded, the Pope appeared to have no public reaction to the actions of the liberalizing faction in the first week, nor to the successful revolt of the others in the second.  He very consciously took an evenhanded approach in his final address, mixing some "pox on both your houses" rhetoric with a call for unity in arriving at the truth.

          What does this have to do with the beatification of Paul VI?  Clearly, raising up the author of Humanae Vitae as the culmination of a synod on the family sends a pretty strong message that Pope Francis is not going to soften Church teaching in this area (as I previously suggested here).  I wonder if he isn't also looking to Blessed Pope Paul as a model for how to approach the question of Church Unity.  It may seem to him that, despite the fact that a whole lot of people weren't happy, Paul's light touch largely succeeded in holding the Church together.  The one significant exception, of course, was Archbishop Lefebvre and his followers, now embodied in the Society of Pius X - to whom Pope Francis seems to be making some very charitable overtures for reconciliation [here].  Like Blessed Paul VI, Francis seems to be aiming for a style more pleasing to the "progressives", while maintaining (on doctrinal matters, anyway) a more traditional substance.

Blessed Paul VI, The Synod, and Pope Francis

An earlier version of this post was published October 25th 2014.

     Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini is reported to have said at the time that St. John XXIII didn't realize what a "hornet's nest" he was stirring up in calling the Second Vatican Council.  A few short years later, Montini,  as Pope Paul VI, found himself presiding over that very hornet's nest.  He faced the Herculean task of trying to preserve the unity of the Church in the face of the forces that had been unleashed, both during the council and in the years that followed. Pope Paul's approach seemed to be based on the maxim (often erroneously attributed to St. Augustine): "Unity in essential things, liberty in doubtful things, charity in all things".  Pope John had quoted it in his first encyclical,  Ad Petri Cathedram [here], and Pope Paul took it to heart.  He allowed everyone to have his say when possible, which tended to create the appearance (and, quite frankly, often the reality) of disarray in the Church.  Where he judged it necessary, on the other hand, he firmly restated the traditional teaching: on priestly celibacy [here], for instance, the all-male clergy [here], and most famously, human sexuality in his most well-known encyclical, Humanae Vitae [here]. As a rule he refrained from condemnations, denunciations, and other seemingly uncharitable gestures.

Blessed Paul VI at the closing ceremony of the Second Vatican Council        

       Pope Paul is now Blessed Paul VI, having been beatified last weekend at the conclusion of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family.  Speaking of which, one can't help but agree with the numerous commentators who have observed that this synod was not just Extraordinary, but extraordinary.  There's no need for me to recap all the hijinx that took place; let it suffice to say that such public disarray in the upper reaches of the Church has not been seen the pontificate of, yes, Paul VI.

          There are some interesting connections here.  There has been a lot of speculation as to Pope Francis's position on the controverted issues and controversial maneuvering at the synod.  He gave Cardinal Kasper the opportunity to run with his long-time project of loosening up the rules preventing divorced Catholics who have remarried without annulment from receiving communion, and appointed administrators for the synod who finagled to make that and other liberalizing proposals seem much more agreeable to the assembled fathers than they actually were; he also put more traditionally-minded prelates such as South African Cardinal Napier in a position to counter the machinations of Kasper and his crew.  As the synod unfolded, the Pope appeared to have no public reaction to the actions of the liberalizing faction in the first week, nor to the successful revolt of the others in the second.  He very consciously took an evenhanded approach in his final address, mixing some "pox on both your houses" rhetoric with a call for unity in arriving at the truth.

          What does this have to do with the beatification of Paul VI?  Clearly, raising up the author of Humanae Vitae as the culmination of a synod on the family sends a pretty strong message that Pope Francis is not going to soften Church teaching in this area (as I previously suggested here).  I wonder if he isn't also looking to Blessed Pope Paul as a model for how to approach the question of Church Unity.  It may seem to him that, despite the fact that a whole lot of people weren't happy, Paul's light touch largely succeeded in holding the Church together.  The one significant exception, of course, was Archbishop Lefebvre and his followers, now embodied in the Society of Pius X - to whom Pope Francis seems to be making some very charitable overtures for reconciliation [here].  Like Blessed Paul VI, Francis seems to be aiming for a style more pleasing to the "progressives", while maintaining (on doctrinal matters, anyway) a more traditional substance.*
     Whatever the Pope's personal stance on the doctrinal issues, however, the less orthodox views of some of the bishops at the synod received much more attention from most media outlets, which tend to have very little sympathy for Catholic teaching in this area.  The same is likely to happen again this coming fall, at the synod for which last year's meeting was merely a preliminary.  At the same time, the attacks n the family have grown even more intense. I ask that we pray very hard for the Holy Father and the synod fathers, that they make this year's gathering both a sign of unity, and a clear statement of the timeless teaching of the Church. 

*. . . I haven't forgotten about the post-Vatican II reform of the liturgy: I'll get to that in another post.

Blessed Paul VI, the Synod, and Pope Francis

     I set out to write a post on Blessed Paul VI; I ended up saying as much about the synod at which he was beatified, and the Pope who presided over both synod and beatification, as I did about Pope Paul himself.  I'll address Blessed Paul more directly in the near future.

     Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini is reported to have said at the time that St. John XXIII didn't realize what a "hornet's nest" he was stirring up in calling the Second Vatican Council.  A few short years later, Montini,  as Pope Paul VI, found himself presiding over that very hornet's nest.  He faced the Herculean task of trying to preserve the unity of the Church in the face of the forces that had been unleashed, both during the council and in the years that followed. Pope Paul's approach seemed to be based on the maxim (often erroneously attributed to St. Augustine): "Unity in essential things, liberty in doubtful things, charity in all things".  Pope John had quoted it in his first encyclical,  Ad Petri Cathedram [here], and Pope Paul took it to heart.  He allowed everyone to have his say when possible, which tended to create the appearance (and, quite frankly, often the reality) of disarray in the Church.  Where he judged it necessary, on the other hand, he firmly restated the traditional teaching: on priestly celibacy [here], for instance, the all-male clergy [here], and most famously, human sexuality in his most well-known encyclical, Humanae Vitae [here]. As a rule he refrained from condemnations, denunciations, and other seemingly uncharitable gestures.

Blessed Paul VI at the closing ceremony of the Second Vatican Council        

       Pope Paul is now Blessed Paul VI, having been beatified last weekend at the conclusion of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family.  Speaking of which, one can't help but agree with the numerous commentators who have observed that this synod was not just Extraordinary, but extraordinary.  There's no need for me to recap all the hijinx that took place; let it suffice to say that such public disarray in the upper reaches of the Church has not been seen the pontificate of, yes, Paul VI.

          There are some interesting connections here.  There has been a lot of speculation as to Pope Francis's position on the controverted issues and controversial maneuvering at the synod.  He gave Cardinal Kasper the opportunity to run with his long-time project of loosening up the rules preventing divorced Catholics who have remarried without annulment from receiving communion, and appointed administrators for the synod who finagled to make that and other liberalizing proposals seem much more agreeable to the assembled fathers than they actually were; he also put more traditionally-minded prelates such as South African Cardinal Napier in a position to counter the machinations of Kasper and his crew.  As the synod unfolded, the Pope appeared to have no public reaction to the actions of the liberalizing faction in the first week, nor to the successful revolt of the others in the second.  He very consciously took an evenhanded approach in his final address, mixing some "pox on both your houses" rhetoric with a call for unity in arriving at the truth.

          What does this have to do with the beatification of Paul VI?  Clearly, raising up the author of Humanae Vitae as the culmination of a synod on the family sends a pretty strong message that Pope Francis is not going to soften Church teaching in this area (as I previously suggested here).  I wonder if he isn't also looking to Blessed Pope Paul as a model for how to approach the question of Church Unity.  It may seem to him that, despite the fact that a whole lot of people weren't happy, Paul's light touch largely succeeded in holding the Church together.  The one significant exception, of course, was Archbishop Lefebvre and his followers, now embodied in the Society of Pius X - to whom Pope Francis seems to be making some very charitable overtures for reconciliation [here].  Like Blessed Paul VI, Francis seems to be aiming for a style more pleasing to the "progressives", while maintaining (on doctrinal matters, anyway) a more traditional substance.*

*. . . I haven't forgotten about the post-Vatican II reform of the liturgy: I'll get to that in another post.