It would appear that under Pope Francis, the Church is acknowledging that popular opinion in western society has become so alienated by the legalistic efforts of conservative churches and political authority to uphold traditional morality, that Christians now urgently need a whole new framework to engage a culture that is steadily becoming more and more hostile to their values and worldview.
This is really a bad time to be a rigid traditionalist with old-fashioned notions of "God, honor, and country." In a sense, the world has simply passed them by - the world they speak of preserving and reviving has, in very important ways, already ceased to exist.
In its place, we have a global market economy where everything and everyone is basically commoditized into some monetary value, where even longstanding national borders are being rendered largely irrelevant by the demands of corporate profits, and where governmental and official institutions may claim to represent the will of the people as much as they want, but in practice must resort to playing catch-up with a tiny professional/managerial elite on the payrolls of multinational conglomerates.
We all uphold this system far more than our misgivings about it allow us to recognize.
What is really happening, under the radar screen of experts, is that western Christendom's materialist heresy - ultimately borne out of the Protestant Reformation, which in turn spawned the secular tsunami of the Enlightenment - is reaching its logical 500-year conclusion. It has flourished for this past half-millennium because that's how long it has taken to spread worldwide to a degree that allowed it to both conquer the western hemisphere and also fundamentally shake up the venerable Asiatic civilizations of the eastern hemisphere.
The nihilism that an essentially materialist worldview - even one that has so successfully cloaked itself with Christian belief for so long - simply cannot be averted. Modern Christendom has become a victim of its own success: by liberating the sphere of human material activity so dramatically, it has unleashed a beast that, despite its constant efforts to restrain it, progressively and inexorably becomes less and less manageable to any degree whatsoever, to the point where it devours the master who created it.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Thursday, October 23, 2014
America's most urgent need? A sexual counterrevolution!
Speaking as one who has been miraculously delivered from a 14-year addiction to at least daily masturbation, I must say that what this country needs so desperately is a sexual counterrevolution.
There will be no renewal of the Judeo-Christian faith in America without a "re-Puritanization" of our sexual ethics. Traditionalists in this country who lament the inexorable advance of the general sexual anarchy in society since the Sixties would do well to consider just how badly they and their brethren have failed to stem the tide of corruption of sexuality within the church.
With levels of porn use (which is typically accompanied by masturbation) at shocking epidemic levels among Christian men (30-50 percent in one recent survey) and even mini-epidemic levels among Christian women (up to 20 percent), how in the world can we expect to witness to the virtue of chastity?
We Christians must take a long, hard look beyond the veneer of these problems to see the root cause: a general lack of faith in the sufficiency of God alone to satisfy our deepest relational needs and longings.
Few single Christians take their relationship with God deep enough in prayer and fasting to seriously consider lifelong celibacy as an option - even though Scripture itself testifies that this is in fact the most blessed lifestyle (St. Paul to the Corinthians). Many if not most young Christians marry at least in part to relieve and contain sexual urges that they're resigned to otherwise going wild.
While this difficulty of celibacy has always existed in the history of the church, it is deeply compounded today by a culture that glamorizes the image at the expense of the substance - a culture that is more at home in the church than we as Christians often realize. Our whole megachurch and Billy Graham crusade-style evangelical Christian culture - for all its value - is not conducive to encouraging young believers to walk slowly and silently with the Lord, as opposed to aggressively pursuing spectacular ministry success that would merit a Christianity Today or Relevant magazine article.
Young Christians have mastered the art of compelling persuasion, powerful worship experiences and spiritual encounters: they have not grasped that true sanctity can only be attained through constant fasting and self-denial of both physical and psychological appetites. And of course, of all these appetites, the desire for sexual intimacy is the crown.
We live in an age where you can get spiritual highs and good feelings from yoga for a monetary fee that seems so much lighter than the moral demands of Christianity. Until Christians figure out how to abandon their feel-good-about-oneself spirituality and replace it with an austere neo-Puritanism, epitomized by a new repression of sexual passions, we will continue to lose ground in the ongoing culture war.
There will be no renewal of the Judeo-Christian faith in America without a "re-Puritanization" of our sexual ethics. Traditionalists in this country who lament the inexorable advance of the general sexual anarchy in society since the Sixties would do well to consider just how badly they and their brethren have failed to stem the tide of corruption of sexuality within the church.
With levels of porn use (which is typically accompanied by masturbation) at shocking epidemic levels among Christian men (30-50 percent in one recent survey) and even mini-epidemic levels among Christian women (up to 20 percent), how in the world can we expect to witness to the virtue of chastity?
We Christians must take a long, hard look beyond the veneer of these problems to see the root cause: a general lack of faith in the sufficiency of God alone to satisfy our deepest relational needs and longings.
Few single Christians take their relationship with God deep enough in prayer and fasting to seriously consider lifelong celibacy as an option - even though Scripture itself testifies that this is in fact the most blessed lifestyle (St. Paul to the Corinthians). Many if not most young Christians marry at least in part to relieve and contain sexual urges that they're resigned to otherwise going wild.
While this difficulty of celibacy has always existed in the history of the church, it is deeply compounded today by a culture that glamorizes the image at the expense of the substance - a culture that is more at home in the church than we as Christians often realize. Our whole megachurch and Billy Graham crusade-style evangelical Christian culture - for all its value - is not conducive to encouraging young believers to walk slowly and silently with the Lord, as opposed to aggressively pursuing spectacular ministry success that would merit a Christianity Today or Relevant magazine article.
Young Christians have mastered the art of compelling persuasion, powerful worship experiences and spiritual encounters: they have not grasped that true sanctity can only be attained through constant fasting and self-denial of both physical and psychological appetites. And of course, of all these appetites, the desire for sexual intimacy is the crown.
We live in an age where you can get spiritual highs and good feelings from yoga for a monetary fee that seems so much lighter than the moral demands of Christianity. Until Christians figure out how to abandon their feel-good-about-oneself spirituality and replace it with an austere neo-Puritanism, epitomized by a new repression of sexual passions, we will continue to lose ground in the ongoing culture war.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Salvation is NOT by faith alone!
I converted to Catholicism because I no longer believed that my salvation could be secured by "faith alone."
Instead, I had to accomplish an actual work - by my own free will - to cooperate with God's mercy and grace that were given to me, in order to not continue a dreadful pattern of wrecking His salvation with my habitual sins.
Specifically, I had to stop masturbating. The only way I could do this was by physical mortification - sleeping on the floor, which I do to this day (with some lapses).
This is the paradox of authentic Christian salvation: it is truly God alone Who saves, but He cannot do it without our cooperation. In my experience, faith is not merely an assent to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but it entails an important "work" on our part - namely, genuine sorrow for and repentance from sin. We all have to reach a point where we would rather die than commit the same grave sin again, and thus resolve to do everything in our God-given power to avoid such sin or even its near occasion.
This is serious, serious hard work: it's not as simple as making a personal resolution. It requires radical measures: I mean things like cutting off your Internet access for 6 months so you won't look at pornography again.
Now, of course, we should never confuse the means with the end. Some people won't have to sleep on the floor, or cut off their Internet for a while, in order to come to the same place: a deep loathing of one's sexual impurity. But the underlying basis for every path of deliverance from sin is the same: it must fully involve one's free will in the pursuit of a holy hatred for the filth that is sin and, on its flip side, a holy flame of love for the beauty of sanctity.
How, then, can be we sure (or more sure) that we have truly been saved? Only when not even a hint of adultery, fornication, or any kind of sexual deviance, no matter how seemingly trivial, can ever hold any sway over our souls for more than a few tense moments.
Because once in Heaven, we will see chastity and unchastity plainly for what they really are: the former a glowing young virgin of indescribable pulchritude and fragrance, the latter a horrid-looking, putrid old witch.
Instead, I had to accomplish an actual work - by my own free will - to cooperate with God's mercy and grace that were given to me, in order to not continue a dreadful pattern of wrecking His salvation with my habitual sins.
Specifically, I had to stop masturbating. The only way I could do this was by physical mortification - sleeping on the floor, which I do to this day (with some lapses).
This is the paradox of authentic Christian salvation: it is truly God alone Who saves, but He cannot do it without our cooperation. In my experience, faith is not merely an assent to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but it entails an important "work" on our part - namely, genuine sorrow for and repentance from sin. We all have to reach a point where we would rather die than commit the same grave sin again, and thus resolve to do everything in our God-given power to avoid such sin or even its near occasion.
This is serious, serious hard work: it's not as simple as making a personal resolution. It requires radical measures: I mean things like cutting off your Internet access for 6 months so you won't look at pornography again.
Now, of course, we should never confuse the means with the end. Some people won't have to sleep on the floor, or cut off their Internet for a while, in order to come to the same place: a deep loathing of one's sexual impurity. But the underlying basis for every path of deliverance from sin is the same: it must fully involve one's free will in the pursuit of a holy hatred for the filth that is sin and, on its flip side, a holy flame of love for the beauty of sanctity.
How, then, can be we sure (or more sure) that we have truly been saved? Only when not even a hint of adultery, fornication, or any kind of sexual deviance, no matter how seemingly trivial, can ever hold any sway over our souls for more than a few tense moments.
Because once in Heaven, we will see chastity and unchastity plainly for what they really are: the former a glowing young virgin of indescribable pulchritude and fragrance, the latter a horrid-looking, putrid old witch.
Friday, August 1, 2014
Christ is Mary concealed, Mary is Christ revealed
Today is the feast day of my patron, St. Alphonsus Maria Liguori (1696-1787), Doctor of the Church and renowned moral theologian and Mariologist. This after the yesterday's (July 31) memorial of another great saint, St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Jesuits.
Both had a great love for the Virgin Mary, as all Catholics should aspire to.
The glory of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is this: that Almighty God took the form of human flesh and blood through a young virgin, and just as He first entered His creation through this virgin, so He also decided to channel all of His mercy and grace to the human race through this virgin, and very deliberately kept her hidden from her own beneficiaries!
Mary is the most exalted of all creatures, because it is exclusively through her that the eternal mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is unveiled to the Host of Heaven.
Christ is Mary concealed, Mary is Christ revealed.
Everything that any sincere soul comes to know about Christ will inexorably point that soul to the conclusion that He is a Savior of boundless mercy, whose compassion always overrules His anger. And, any and every personal experience of this unfathomable Divine Mercy of Jesus is a most sublime invitation to get to know the wellspring of tenderness from whose form He received His own - Mary.
The blessed soul who takes Mary for her mother and comes to know her will then find that she is a sheer abyss - a sea, or "Maria", as she is so fittingly named in the Latin tongues - of adoring contemplation of the two holiest mysteries of Christ's redemption, namely the Incarnation and the Passion. This is the pearl of greatest price! For the aim of the Christian life is, in the words of St. Paul, "to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified." Mary is both the gateway to this magnificent discovery and the discovery in itself!
She is so completely and perfectly united with her Divine Son that, even though few Christians are aware of it in this life, in Heaven the fullness of revelation will be none other than the fact that she is both the source and summit of our glorification, because that glorification is precisely our mystical bond to the Body and Blood of her Son - the fruit of her womb.
Both had a great love for the Virgin Mary, as all Catholics should aspire to.
The glory of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is this: that Almighty God took the form of human flesh and blood through a young virgin, and just as He first entered His creation through this virgin, so He also decided to channel all of His mercy and grace to the human race through this virgin, and very deliberately kept her hidden from her own beneficiaries!
Mary is the most exalted of all creatures, because it is exclusively through her that the eternal mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is unveiled to the Host of Heaven.
Christ is Mary concealed, Mary is Christ revealed.
Everything that any sincere soul comes to know about Christ will inexorably point that soul to the conclusion that He is a Savior of boundless mercy, whose compassion always overrules His anger. And, any and every personal experience of this unfathomable Divine Mercy of Jesus is a most sublime invitation to get to know the wellspring of tenderness from whose form He received His own - Mary.
The blessed soul who takes Mary for her mother and comes to know her will then find that she is a sheer abyss - a sea, or "Maria", as she is so fittingly named in the Latin tongues - of adoring contemplation of the two holiest mysteries of Christ's redemption, namely the Incarnation and the Passion. This is the pearl of greatest price! For the aim of the Christian life is, in the words of St. Paul, "to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified." Mary is both the gateway to this magnificent discovery and the discovery in itself!
She is so completely and perfectly united with her Divine Son that, even though few Christians are aware of it in this life, in Heaven the fullness of revelation will be none other than the fact that she is both the source and summit of our glorification, because that glorification is precisely our mystical bond to the Body and Blood of her Son - the fruit of her womb.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Pope St. John Paul II, pray for Ukraine, Russia, and Germany!
Exactly 100 years ago this Friday, August 1, Germany declared war on Russia to mark the start of the cataclysmic First World War (1914-1918), fittingly dubbed the "suicide of Europe" by then-Pope Benedict XV.
As it was then in the Balkans, so it is now in Ukraine: it is the relationship between Germany and Russia that holds the peace of Europe at stake.
If and when the East German-trained KGB agent Vladimir Putin, God forbid, does invade eastern Ukraine, it will only be because of a dramatic personal falling out he would have suffered with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Russian-speaking East German expert on the Soviet Union. The two have been likened to a married couple who have grown accustomed to each other's tricks and traps: should they actually divorce, the consequences would be catastrophic.
How fitting it is that Pope St. John Paul II, though he lies at rest in Rome, has his relics scattered throughout his native Poland, at the crossroads of the historic German and Russian empires: this battle to somehow reconcile East and West in Ukraine is truly his.
At the heart of the whole Russo-Ukrainian conflict is the ancient split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches: the millennial (1054 AD) division that he said was his greatest suffering as he neared the end of his life. (He had actually visited Catholic shrines in western Ukraine when it was part of interwar Poland.)
Pope St. John Paul II, pray for Ukraine, Russia, and Germany!
As it was then in the Balkans, so it is now in Ukraine: it is the relationship between Germany and Russia that holds the peace of Europe at stake.
If and when the East German-trained KGB agent Vladimir Putin, God forbid, does invade eastern Ukraine, it will only be because of a dramatic personal falling out he would have suffered with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Russian-speaking East German expert on the Soviet Union. The two have been likened to a married couple who have grown accustomed to each other's tricks and traps: should they actually divorce, the consequences would be catastrophic.
How fitting it is that Pope St. John Paul II, though he lies at rest in Rome, has his relics scattered throughout his native Poland, at the crossroads of the historic German and Russian empires: this battle to somehow reconcile East and West in Ukraine is truly his.
At the heart of the whole Russo-Ukrainian conflict is the ancient split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches: the millennial (1054 AD) division that he said was his greatest suffering as he neared the end of his life. (He had actually visited Catholic shrines in western Ukraine when it was part of interwar Poland.)
Pope St. John Paul II, pray for Ukraine, Russia, and Germany!
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
St. Bridget of Sweden and northern European Christianity
Today's feast: St. Bridget of Sweden (1302/3-1373). Not a bad one to follow St. Mary Magdalene, as this is another woman of God who attained a remarkable intimacy with Christ. As a mystic, she is probably best known for her visions and revelations of the Passion of Jesus Christ and of the hidden life of the Virgin Mary. Quite impressive given that she was also a devoted wife and mother, and a Scandinavian princess to boot. All this just two centuries before northern Europe turned Protestant.
As I have pointed out to some folks who have had the benefit of my insight, the whole Protestant Reformation was essentially an ethno-linguistic revolt against the Catholic clerical authority of the Latin Mediterranean by Germanic northern Europe, including the British Isles and Scandinavia: it ultimately has its origins in the stunning annihilation of three Roman legions by Gothic tribesmen at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in 14 AD. That battle effectively split Europe - to this very day - between the Romance (i.e. Latin-derived) and Germanic languages. English is actually the marriage of both groups: the vernacular is Germanic (primarily via the Saxons), the literary is Romance (via Norman-French). This is partly why modern English is such a versatile tongue: it is singularly adaptable, given its dual origin.
Where the Caesars failed, the Popes who supplanted them as masters of Rome succeeded: they brought Germanic northern Europe under the rule of the Roman Catholic Church from the 6th to 9th centuries AD. They accomplished this primarily by the conversion of nobles and princes whom they anointed as kings and, beginning with Charlemagne in 800 AD, the Holy Roman Emperor of central and western Europe. Thus they established the symbiosis between spiritual and secular power that would characterize medieval west European Christendom, which closely resembled a parallel arrangement in eastern Christianity, with the Eastern Orthodox Church.
St. Bridget, then, is one of the crowns of medieval Christendom, coming as she did in the High Middle Ages, circa 14th century, when Europe was at the junction between the medieval and Renaissance periods. Being a Germanic northern European, she was part of a culture that had originally adopted Catholic religious and social customs from the Mediterranean, but which had caught on very quickly in the preceding centuries to contribute disproportionately to the overall richness of Catholic theology and spirituality, primarily through its advanced literary development. The medieval Church in England, for one, was notable for its erudition.
Not surprisingly, it was this higher literacy - in both quantity and quality - that would soon empower Germanic northern Europe to pull off a spiritual Teutoburg Forest against Rome: the Reformation of Martin Luther, which began with his 95 Theses in 1517.
As I have pointed out to some folks who have had the benefit of my insight, the whole Protestant Reformation was essentially an ethno-linguistic revolt against the Catholic clerical authority of the Latin Mediterranean by Germanic northern Europe, including the British Isles and Scandinavia: it ultimately has its origins in the stunning annihilation of three Roman legions by Gothic tribesmen at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in 14 AD. That battle effectively split Europe - to this very day - between the Romance (i.e. Latin-derived) and Germanic languages. English is actually the marriage of both groups: the vernacular is Germanic (primarily via the Saxons), the literary is Romance (via Norman-French). This is partly why modern English is such a versatile tongue: it is singularly adaptable, given its dual origin.
Where the Caesars failed, the Popes who supplanted them as masters of Rome succeeded: they brought Germanic northern Europe under the rule of the Roman Catholic Church from the 6th to 9th centuries AD. They accomplished this primarily by the conversion of nobles and princes whom they anointed as kings and, beginning with Charlemagne in 800 AD, the Holy Roman Emperor of central and western Europe. Thus they established the symbiosis between spiritual and secular power that would characterize medieval west European Christendom, which closely resembled a parallel arrangement in eastern Christianity, with the Eastern Orthodox Church.
St. Bridget, then, is one of the crowns of medieval Christendom, coming as she did in the High Middle Ages, circa 14th century, when Europe was at the junction between the medieval and Renaissance periods. Being a Germanic northern European, she was part of a culture that had originally adopted Catholic religious and social customs from the Mediterranean, but which had caught on very quickly in the preceding centuries to contribute disproportionately to the overall richness of Catholic theology and spirituality, primarily through its advanced literary development. The medieval Church in England, for one, was notable for its erudition.
Not surprisingly, it was this higher literacy - in both quantity and quality - that would soon empower Germanic northern Europe to pull off a spiritual Teutoburg Forest against Rome: the Reformation of Martin Luther, which began with his 95 Theses in 1517.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
On feast of St. Mary Magdalene, skipped Mass, but can sense her special help
Thank God the Church has given us St. Mary Magdalene: the prostitute-turned-first nun (of sorts). It's quite a help for both young men and women struggling with their sexuality and with lustful passions.
My picture of Mary Magdalene is this: I agree with the traditional Church view that she is one and the same with St. Mary of Bethany, the younger sister of Martha and Lazarus of Bethany. And yes, for a while she was a prostitute and adulteress who also had seven demons in her, who was saved from stoning by Jesus at the beginning of her dramatic conversion, which ultimately led to her being the first recorded witness of the Risen Christ (after she had been the first to prepare for his Passion by anointing his feet with luxuriant perfume).
Here is my own intuitive theory about her life:
Being the baby sister of Martha and Lazarus of Bethany (I hazard she was nearly 20 years younger than Martha and 15 or so than Lazarus), she was a supposedly good little girl who was raised by her much older brother and sister after their elderly parents both died; they were a very decent, pious Jewish family, so naturally this pretty little soul was specially targeted by the Devil, since her disgrace would bring enormous humiliation and suffering to the whole town of Bethany.
Around marrying age, say 14, this hitherto nice Jewish girl who probably prayed and fasted in emulation of her older brother and sister had also become a budding young woman of exceptional beauty and a very attractive figure, and naturally Martha and Lazarus felt very protective towards her because of all the attention she began to draw from men.
And this is where the Devil struck, very subtly but slowly and surely: "Look, Mary, you're such a beautiful young lady now, strong and independent, and your brother and sister have no right controlling you anymore like you're a little baby. Maybe you should stand up for yourself - they're not your mom and dad!"
Unfortunately, the Devil took exceptional care to ensure that he nailed Mary: he dispatched some of his most dependable anti-purity demons for this job, spirits with a particular gift for corrupting feminine beauty through the art of seduction and vanity.
And so it happened: Mary would not allow Martha and Lazarus to screen the many suitors for her hand in marriage. When a good candidate came forward, wholeheartedly approved by her parental siblings, she would not consent. At length, she began to associate with men who were specifically unacceptable to Martha and Lazarus, leaving them no choice but to attempt to discipline her. With that, she fled home altogether.
And thus began her life of dissipation. Was it some rich swindler who introduced her to the world of high-end harlotry? One can easily see the impressionability of a 16- or 17-year-old girl who had bitterly abandoned her religious family to check out the world with all its pomp and splendor on her own terms (or so she thought to be).
Probably wishing to be as far away from Bethany and Jerusalem (i.e. Jewish religiosity) as possible, she relocated far to the north, to Magdala near Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, a region known for its cosmopolitan secularism (being under the rule of the decadent Roman puppet King Herod). Her career as a prostitute probably lasted about 7 years, as I estimate she was about 24 at the time she was rescued by Jesus towards the start of his public ministry in Galilee.
My own theory is that she was already looking to settle down at that point: her shelf life as a top-end hooker had run out, and with all her ill-gotten wealth she began looking for some real love. Of course, her only prospects were similarly vice-riddled men either of questionable repute or with secret double lives. She probably ended up with one of the latter type. She must still have been really hot and sexy, otherwise the Pharisees wouldn't have bothered to peep on her to catch her in the very act of adultery.
All that said, I guess I now have a special friend I can turn to if I ever feel compelled to share Christ with some female who kicks my male hormones into high gear.
St. Mary Magdalene, pray for us!
My picture of Mary Magdalene is this: I agree with the traditional Church view that she is one and the same with St. Mary of Bethany, the younger sister of Martha and Lazarus of Bethany. And yes, for a while she was a prostitute and adulteress who also had seven demons in her, who was saved from stoning by Jesus at the beginning of her dramatic conversion, which ultimately led to her being the first recorded witness of the Risen Christ (after she had been the first to prepare for his Passion by anointing his feet with luxuriant perfume).
Here is my own intuitive theory about her life:
Being the baby sister of Martha and Lazarus of Bethany (I hazard she was nearly 20 years younger than Martha and 15 or so than Lazarus), she was a supposedly good little girl who was raised by her much older brother and sister after their elderly parents both died; they were a very decent, pious Jewish family, so naturally this pretty little soul was specially targeted by the Devil, since her disgrace would bring enormous humiliation and suffering to the whole town of Bethany.
Around marrying age, say 14, this hitherto nice Jewish girl who probably prayed and fasted in emulation of her older brother and sister had also become a budding young woman of exceptional beauty and a very attractive figure, and naturally Martha and Lazarus felt very protective towards her because of all the attention she began to draw from men.
And this is where the Devil struck, very subtly but slowly and surely: "Look, Mary, you're such a beautiful young lady now, strong and independent, and your brother and sister have no right controlling you anymore like you're a little baby. Maybe you should stand up for yourself - they're not your mom and dad!"
Unfortunately, the Devil took exceptional care to ensure that he nailed Mary: he dispatched some of his most dependable anti-purity demons for this job, spirits with a particular gift for corrupting feminine beauty through the art of seduction and vanity.
And so it happened: Mary would not allow Martha and Lazarus to screen the many suitors for her hand in marriage. When a good candidate came forward, wholeheartedly approved by her parental siblings, she would not consent. At length, she began to associate with men who were specifically unacceptable to Martha and Lazarus, leaving them no choice but to attempt to discipline her. With that, she fled home altogether.
And thus began her life of dissipation. Was it some rich swindler who introduced her to the world of high-end harlotry? One can easily see the impressionability of a 16- or 17-year-old girl who had bitterly abandoned her religious family to check out the world with all its pomp and splendor on her own terms (or so she thought to be).
Probably wishing to be as far away from Bethany and Jerusalem (i.e. Jewish religiosity) as possible, she relocated far to the north, to Magdala near Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, a region known for its cosmopolitan secularism (being under the rule of the decadent Roman puppet King Herod). Her career as a prostitute probably lasted about 7 years, as I estimate she was about 24 at the time she was rescued by Jesus towards the start of his public ministry in Galilee.
My own theory is that she was already looking to settle down at that point: her shelf life as a top-end hooker had run out, and with all her ill-gotten wealth she began looking for some real love. Of course, her only prospects were similarly vice-riddled men either of questionable repute or with secret double lives. She probably ended up with one of the latter type. She must still have been really hot and sexy, otherwise the Pharisees wouldn't have bothered to peep on her to catch her in the very act of adultery.
All that said, I guess I now have a special friend I can turn to if I ever feel compelled to share Christ with some female who kicks my male hormones into high gear.
St. Mary Magdalene, pray for us!
Monday, July 21, 2014
Mass at F. Scott Fitzgerald's church in Rockville, Maryland
Went to noon Mass at St. Mary's Church in Rockville today, since I couldn't get up early enough for morning Mass at St. Bernadette's close to home. Their daily noon Mass is at the old chapel-like wooden building, which is famous as the church of The Great Gatsby author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who is buried in the small cemetery right next to it.
It's actually quite a fitting place to mention in my first post for this blog, since it sits at the intersection of my three identities: it is a quintessentially Catholic church, in the heart of a quintessential upper-middle class township within one of the wealthiest counties (Montgomery County, north and west of Washington DC) in the United States, yet it also happens to be the home of the only ethnic Chinese Catholic worshiping community in all of Maryland - the Our Lady of China Pastoral Mission. (I am not involved with this community, though, beyond attending a few Chinese Masses a few years ago.)
The priest today, who is from Poland, gave a pretty fitting homily, too: the Gospel was the one in which the Pharisees demanded a sign from Jesus to prove he was the Messiah, and he drew the parallel to today's world in which so many people, even Christians, close their hearts to God's grace by imposing strict boundaries on themselves and others, for what they consider to be beliefs and practices that are or are not acceptable to God.
But Pope Francis has exhorted us to be bridge-builders, not wall-builders.
Being a former evangelical Protestant, I have gradually come to a better understanding of just why God has allowed different types of Christianity - Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox - to exist over the centuries.
I myself believe the Holy Mass - as practiced by Catholics and Orthodox - to be the only specific worship rite instituted by Christ himself (when he was in the flesh), but I don't discount any authentic manifestations of the Holy Spirit that are indisputably present in more modern churches and denominations. After all, I'm from one of them myself.
And yet, this glaring division within Christianity should beg the question: can we Christians simply assume that those who don't acknowledge Christ can't be "saved", any more than I, as a Catholic, can assume that a Protestant doesn't know Christ as deeply as I do, because he has never received his true Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist?
It's actually quite a fitting place to mention in my first post for this blog, since it sits at the intersection of my three identities: it is a quintessentially Catholic church, in the heart of a quintessential upper-middle class township within one of the wealthiest counties (Montgomery County, north and west of Washington DC) in the United States, yet it also happens to be the home of the only ethnic Chinese Catholic worshiping community in all of Maryland - the Our Lady of China Pastoral Mission. (I am not involved with this community, though, beyond attending a few Chinese Masses a few years ago.)
The priest today, who is from Poland, gave a pretty fitting homily, too: the Gospel was the one in which the Pharisees demanded a sign from Jesus to prove he was the Messiah, and he drew the parallel to today's world in which so many people, even Christians, close their hearts to God's grace by imposing strict boundaries on themselves and others, for what they consider to be beliefs and practices that are or are not acceptable to God.
But Pope Francis has exhorted us to be bridge-builders, not wall-builders.
Being a former evangelical Protestant, I have gradually come to a better understanding of just why God has allowed different types of Christianity - Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox - to exist over the centuries.
I myself believe the Holy Mass - as practiced by Catholics and Orthodox - to be the only specific worship rite instituted by Christ himself (when he was in the flesh), but I don't discount any authentic manifestations of the Holy Spirit that are indisputably present in more modern churches and denominations. After all, I'm from one of them myself.
And yet, this glaring division within Christianity should beg the question: can we Christians simply assume that those who don't acknowledge Christ can't be "saved", any more than I, as a Catholic, can assume that a Protestant doesn't know Christ as deeply as I do, because he has never received his true Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist?
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