Taken from the website of an Anglican priest in New Zealand, Bosco Peters, on the proper place of the Liturgy of the Hours in the prayer life of the Christian believer:
Many who pray the Daily Office have a personal Rule of Life, or even an expectation or vows that require that regular discipline. These can often end up feeling guilty when a particular Hour has not been prayed by them. Some, in fact, will then try to “catch up” what they have missed – even gluing a number of Hours together and praying them one after the other. This comes out of an individualistic interpretation of Christianity whereby individuals join the church for mutual support of individual spiritual growth. The Liturgy of the Hours seen as the Prayer of the Church, and the spirituality that goes with this approach, flips this on its head.
The Church as Christ’s Body, in that perspective, exists prior to individuals joining it, and individuals become Christians precisely through their incorporation into this community (primarily through baptism). The Liturgy of the Hours, as the Prayer of the Church, and essentially the prayer of Christ (the whole Christ – head and members) is ongoing, and we have the duty and joy of sharing in this prayer whenever possible. When we miss the prayer we can be conscious that the prayer goes on – we do not catch up with it, rather we pick it up again when we can.
Peters makes a great point about how the Liturgy of the Hours should act as a kind of school for understanding the ecclesiology of the Church’s life of prayer. I must admit that I have sometimes done the exact thing he speaks of here, worrying about “catching up” Offices I may have missed. Such an attitude completely misses the point of liturgical prayer. It is the Church who prays – even Christ as Head of the Church – and we believers are invited into that perfect faithfulness as participants in something that totally transcends our own feeble acts, whether pious or impious. Our modernistic mindset resists that wisdom, but the entire enterprise of Christianity is rooted in a self-renouncing, participatory salvation through Christ’s perfect worship of the Father. That is a truth at once humbling and exhilarating.
The always-readable J. E. Dyer, published in the Green Room over at HotAir, on the burgeoning bloat of judicial control over the character and content of America’s social order:
When the law is in proper relationship to the people, the scope of the judiciary is very limited, but actually more meaningful to the enterprise of “good government.” Today, we have a body of law so huge and burdensome that it has started going 15 rounds with itself on a regular basis, and the judiciary acts as a referee on intricate and inherently political questions of policy.
It is possible to think in different terms, and to conceive of a regimen of law and jurisprudence much more like that envisioned by the Founders. Americans need to wake up and recognize that accepting the way things are done now makes us importunate, dependent, and increasingly unfit to govern ourselves.
This short article provides a fascinating glimpse into what is threatening to become the perpetual silly season of legal posturing and social engineering by examining a convoluted “environmental” (Cap ‘N Trade) law and related lawsuit in California. Dyer’s concern regarding the foolishness of modern approaches to such problem solving is made all the more poignant by the fact that she’s happy, from a practical perspective, for the imposition of the injunction that provides the jumping-off point for her article, yet she is wise enough to understand, from a principled perspective, at what cost a “victory” obtained in such fashion must come.
Music loving Pro-lifers might want to check out the latest solo album from Iona’s Joanne Hogg, entitled Raphael’s Journey. For those not familiar with Ms. Hogg, she is an angelic-voiced Irish beauty who has been the lead vocalist for the Contemporary Christian band Iona since its inception in 1989. Iona falls into more or less the same genre as bands like Clannad or Eden’s Bridge: playing ethereal, Irish-flavored pop, mixing traditional instruments and themes into the standard rock band ensemble. But when Iona rocks, which is not infrequent, they rock with considerably more gusto than most of the other bands of this sort, and their music is often constructed around Christian themes – and is always edifying and nourishing, even when it isn’t explicitly Christian.
Ms. Hogg’s solo efforts, of which I believe Raphael’s Journey is the third, tend musically toward the softer side, as compared to her band’s music, and are much more explicitly confessional (her first, Looking Into Light, was in fact a collection of hymns; the second, Personal, essentially a collection of prayers set to music). This album seems to be a gentle, prayerful exploration of Joanne’s journey into the mysteries of motherhood in recent years, during which time she has borne two children. The cover of the economical packaging is focused on an angelic figure, but with a bright but indistinct image of what appears to be a human right arm reaching up from behind the angel’s right shoulder, hand extended skyward. Overall, it is hard to avoid inferring a reference to the most significant literary appearance of the Archangel Raphael, in the Biblical book of Tobit, where Raphael is sent from the throne of God to make a journey with Tobiah, son of Tobit, to heal the sorrows of two pious families through the marriage of Tobiah and Sarah.
Song titles such as “Songs from the Womb”, “Life is Precious”, and “Dance of the Unborn” convey the sensibility of the album, which places the mystery of human life in the heart of our Creator God, and in the hands of those of His creatures whom He has called to manifest His love. As a father, I have to smile at this new mother singing, in her song “Lullaby in Colour”, of her determination to let her baby sleep, despite the urge to pick him up and hold him – such a scene is truly a microcosm of parenthood on a couple different levels.
The song “Life is Precious”, placed in the setting of an abortion clinic witness, is a direct plea to women contemplating abortion to respect the integrity of the human being entrusted by God to their care. Joanne’s poetry here illumines something of enormous import, which rarely seems to get the notice it deserves in the “culture wars” around abortion, when she sings: “I see you in mortal danger” and “This is life and death for you” – referring to the mother she’s addressing, not the child whose own life hangs in the balance on the sidewalk outside the abortuary. We’re accustomed to hearing the vulnerable children referred to as precious – as they are – but Joanne here is repeatedly looking deeper than that to recognize and witness to the preciousness of the women involved in the terrible calculus, who find themselves in far greater jeopardy than they may realize.
The death of an innocent is a terrible thing, but the killing of an innocent also truly manifests a deadly savaging of the perpetrators; a spiritual death sentence that too many precious children of God may never overcome through the grace of repentance and forgiveness.
Although I think there are better songs on the album, “Life is Precious” stands out for its clarity of purpose, and for the gentle and accurate portrayal of the Pro-Life movement’s most visible – and despised – champions.
Given that, I’ve transcribed here the song’s lyrics, and posted an audio stream. I encourage Pro-Lifers to purchase the album from the Iona web storeher Bandcamp page, both for your own musical and spiritual edification, and to support the work of these wonderful people:
Life is Precious
Standing in the rain I’m praying… Standing in the rain I’m praying…
Standing in the rain I’m praying / you’ll come out that door Give me just a minute of your time / to hear the words that I am saying: You are precious
I know that you see a stranger / holding words for you to read I see you in mortal danger / I’m the second thought I pray you’ll heed
For life is precious, life is given to us Life is ours to live, but not to take
I’m not standing here in judgment / I am here in love, Pleading for a chance to help you see / there’s another way For you are precious
This is life and death for you / but not just you, it’s for another God made you someone in His image / but he also made a mother Out of you
For life is precious, life I given to us Life is ours to live, but not to take Life is precious, life is given in love Life is ours to hold, but not to break
Two hearts beating / inside you Mercy waiting / to hide you Two voices speaking / inside you Truth is waiting / to guide you
For life is precious, life I given to us Life is ours to live, but not to take Life is precious, life is given in love Life is ours to hold, but not to break
Standing in the rain… Standing in the rain, I’m praying Standing in the rain, I’m praying
For the late pope, divine humanity is not something that in a simple sense lies beyond the human; it does not reside in some future, post-human race to which the good of the present must be offered up; it is instead a glory hidden in the depths of every person, even the least of us – even "defectives" and "morons" and "genetic inferiors," if you will – waiting to be revealed, a beauty and dignity and power of such magnificence and splendour that, could we see it now, it would move us either to worship or to terror.
Obviously none of this would interest or impress the doctrinaire materialist. The vision of the human that John Paul articulates and the vision of the "transhuman" to which the still nascent technology of genetic manipulation has given rise are divided not by a difference in practical or ethical philosophy, but by an irreconcilable hostility between two religions, two metaphysics, two worlds – at the last, two gods.
And nothing less than the moral nature of society is at stake. If, as I have said, the metaphysics of transhumanism is inevitably implied within such things as embryonic stem cell research and human cloning, then to embark upon them is already to invoke and invite the advent of a god who will, I think, be a god of boundless horror, one with a limitless appetite for sacrifice.
And it is by their gods that human beings are shaped and known. In some very real sense, "man" is always only the shadow of the god upon whom he calls: for in the manner by which we summon and propitiate that god, and in that ultimate value that he represents for us, who and what we are is determined.
Amen. We are not only created in the image of our Creator God, but we are continually being shaped into the resemblance of the gods we worship. This, it seems to me, is pretty much the entire point of the Old Testament.
David Bentley Hart, in an excellent essay posted on a remarkably robust “Religion & Ethics” section of the website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which highlights the irremediably divergent visions of God inherent in the worldviews of modern, materialist “transhumanists,” and orthodox Christianity – particularly as expressed in Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body:
To one who holds to John Paul’s Christian understanding of the body, and so believes that each human being, from the very first moment of existence, emerges from and is called towards eternity, there are no negotiable or even very perplexing issues regarding our moral obligations before the mystery of life.
Not only is every abortion performed an act of murder, but so is the destruction of every "superfluous" embryo created in fertility clinics or every embryo produced for the purposes of embryonic stem cell research.
The fabrication of clones, the invention of "chimeras" through the miscegenation of human and animal DNA, and of course the termination of supernumerary, dispensable, or defective specimens that such experimentation inevitably entails are in every case irredeemably evil.
Even if, say, research on embryonic stem cells could produce therapies that would heal the lame, or reverse senility, or repair a damaged brain, or prolong life, this would in no measure alter the moral calculus of the situation: human life is an infinite good, never an instrumental resource; human life is possessed of an absolute sanctity, and no benefit (real or supposed) can justify its destruction.
This essay does a splendid job of articulating succinctly the great Christian eschatological doctrine of theosis, or deification, and of demonstrating how the most wicked and patently absurd eugenic philosophies and anthropologies emanating from the penumbra of the academy are really just mockeries of the great truth of God’s end for mankind in sharing His glory.
Brendan O’Neill, editor of spiked, providing an interesting critique from across the pond on the reaction of European elites to the killing this week of Osama bin Laden:
It is extraordinary, and revealing, how quickly the expression of concern about the use of American force in Pakistan became an expression of values superiority over the American people. The modern chattering classes are so utterly removed from the mass of the population, so profoundly disconnected from ‘ordinary people’ and their ‘ordinary thoughts’, that they effectively see happy Americans as a more alien and unusual thing than Osama bin Laden. Where OBL wins their empathy, American jocks receive only their bile.
While it’s hard to see what went down as anything more noble than an assassination, and while it’s very hard to morally justify assassination in any context – never mind when the target has long been driven into hiding, and is quite possibly inept – it was nonetheless shocking to see the degree of hypocritical handwringing going on in liberal circles over this – such as German Chancellor Merkel having criminal charges filed against her for saying she was glad Osama was dead!
Vulgarity alert at the end of the original piece, which is about what one might expect at spiked-online.com…
Ryan Messmore, writing at the Heritage Foundation website, on the ruse that a social and political order disciplined by a commitment to limited government is to be equated with an antipathy for the poor:
The goal of overcoming poverty is not simply to eliminate need, but to enable people to thrive—that is, to empower them to live meaningful lives and contribute to society. Thriving is much more than a full stomach and a place to sleep. People tend to flourish in the context of healthy relationships with their families and communities. Suffering and breakdown often result when those relationships are absent or unhealthy.
Efforts to fight poverty are more effective if they tend to the full range of relationships necessary for thriving. Successful approaches not only heal brokenness where it exists, but also strengthen healthy relationships, which make poverty unlikely in the first place. Preventing a problem is often more effective in the long run than continually treating the symptoms.
Calls for increased welfare spending frequently miss the deeper problem: Poverty in America is often more the result of multiple broken relationships in peoples’ lives than the result of a lack of material resources. Financial trouble is often a symptom of a deeper breakdown. Whether a father abandoning his children, a broken marriage turning a spouse to drugs, or a teenage boy looking for acceptance in a gang, poverty and social breakdown often stem from people relating wrongly to someone or something. These broken lives resulting from broken relationships often lead to material hardship.
Effective responses to poverty address the relational dynamics that lead people to drug addiction, depression, fear, violence, and the inability to keep a job. Yet a large bureaucratic government is ill equipped to address precisely these dynamics and relationships.
Hope, trust, friendship, accountability, discipline, encouragement, and healthy personal relationships are key ingredients of human well-being. When they are missing or ruptured, the result may be poverty, delinquency, or social breakdown. Civil society institutions that foster face-to-face interaction best cultivate these ingredients of human flourishing. Poverty-reduction efforts should therefore strengthen those spheres of society in which healthy relationships grow.
When considering the role of government in alleviating poverty, public policy should acknowledge the relational nature of poverty as well as the vital contributions from local, personal institutions. Government is an important piece of a larger framework that benefits people in need, but government serves best when it protects and safeguards—rather than crowds out—the poverty-fighting institutions of civil society.
This essay demonstrates some clear thinking on a perennially important topic, but like most “conservative” views promoting what used to be called the liberal order of public life, it reads much too much like a report, and not enough like a manifesto. Still, it’s a fairly solid presentation of an idea that is going to have to be nurtured into an effective story, if America is going to avoid the slide into moral anarchy that is pounding on the doors of those European societies awash now in entitlementism coupled with fiscal insolvency. How on earth, after all, does a society deal with a constantly growing underclass of perpetually unemployed or underemployed state-dependent subjects, who expect (and have been promised) a never-ending stream of bread & circus? The domination of society by the bureaucratic state is such a profoundly stupid idea that it is difficult to even find untrammeled ground upon which to stand to criticize it
– Update: with some discussion here, demonstrating yet again just how pervasive assumptions regarding the “normalcy” of state-dependency have quietly become.
Some positivists conceded that metaphysics and theology, though strictly meaningless, might still have a certain limited value. Carnap, for example, thought they might be a kind of music. It isn’t known whether he expected theology and metaphysics to supplant Bach and Mozart, or even Wagner; I myself, however, think they could nicely supersede rock. Hegel could take the place of The Talking Heads; Immanuel Kant could replace The Beach Boys; and instead of The Grateful Dead we could have, say, Arthur Schopenhauer.
David Mills, from an On the Square post over at First Things, from an interesting, if somewhat bizarrely sensationalist, reflection on the moral significance of being true to the self:
No one objects to being told to live like Jesus. But to live the way St. Paul says to live, or the way the Catechism of the Catholic Church says to live, that we dislike. Being chaste, or giving alms, or stifling our desire for profit, or going to confession, or watching our language, or suffering a fool gladly, that rankles, especially if we have to do it. But through obedience to the accumulated and refined wisdom of the Church, we become who we really are. It’s worth it.
Mills hits on a truly significant point here about the easiness of conforming to a vague notion of Jesus-ism (i.e. What Would Jesus Do?), which can be (and too often is) readily reduced to a projection of self-interest by anyone seeking “religious” justification for their own delusions. Not so much, as he says, with Saint Paul, or the teaching Church.
I find the readings for the Mass of the 5th Sunday of Lent (Year A) to be among the most exhilarating set of liturgical readings in the canon, with its recurring promises of resurrection culminating in the Gospel story of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the tomb. I reflected quite a bit on them over the weekend of the 5th Sunday. During the following week, I came across what I’d guess is by now a well-traveled “sermon jam” drawn from recordings of Ravi Zacharias, which asks what should perhaps be considered, for Christians, the fundamental question that arises from the fact of Lazarus having arisen:
This is the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to set us free from the hands of our enemies, free to worship him fearlessly; holy and righteous all the days of our lives. (Luke 1:73-75)
