John Henry Newton and the Golden Calf

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Golden Calf

The Adoration of the Golden Calf by Nicholas Poussin

John Henry Newton (1725 -1807) is best known as the author of “Amazing Grace” and of “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken.” He also wrote a hymn, “The Golden Calf,” which is the subject of today’s reading from Morning Prayer.

When Israel heard the fiery law,
From Sinai’s top proclaimed;
Their hearts seemed full of holy awe,
Their stubborn spirits tamed.

Yet, as forgetting all they knew,
Ere forty days were past;
With blazing Sinai still in view,
A molten calf they cast.

Yea, Aaron, God’s anointed priest,
Who on the mount had been
He durst prepare the idol-beast,
And lead them on to sin.

Lord, what is man! and what are we,
To recompense Thee thus!
In their offence our own we see,
Their story points at us.

From Sinai we have heard Thee speak,
And from mount Calv’ry too;
And yet to idols oft we seek,
While Thou art in our view.

Some golden calf, or golden dream,
Some fancied creature-good,
Presumes to share the heart with Him,
Who bought the whole with blood.

Lord, save us from our golden calves,
Our sin with grief we own;
We would no more be Thine by halves,
But live to Thee alone.

Newton was an English sailor. In 1743, while going to visit friends, Newton was captured and pressed into the naval service by the Royal Navy. He became a midshipman aboard HMS Harwich. At one point Newton tried to desert and was punished in front of the crew of 350. Stripped to the waist and tied to the grating, he received a flogging of eight dozen lashes and was reduced to the rank of a common seaman. Following that disgrace and humiliation, Newton initially contemplated murdering the captain and committing suicide by throwing himself overboard. He recovered, both physically and mentally.

Later, while Harwich was en route to India, he transferred to Pegasus, a slave ship bound for West Africa. The ship carried goods to Africa and traded them for slaves to be shipped to the colonies in the Caribbean and North America. Newton did not get along with the crew of Pegasus. They left him in West Africa with Amos Clowe, a slave dealer. Clowe took Newton to the coast and gave him to his wife, Princess Peye, an African duchess. She abused and mistreated Newton equally to her other slaves. Newton later recounted this period as the time he was “once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in West Africa.”

In 1748, he was rescued by a sea captain and returned to England. During a storm, when it was thought the ship might sink, he prayed for deliverance. This experience began his conversion to evangelical Christianity. Later, whilst aboard a slave vessel bound for the West Indies, he became ill with a violent fever and asked for God’s mercy; an experience he claimed was the turning point in his life.

Despite this, he continued to participate in the Slave Trade. In 1750, he made a further voyage as master of the slave ship ‘Duke of Argyle’ and two voyages on the ‘African’. He admitted that he was a ruthless businessman and a unfeeling observer of the Africans he traded.  Slave revolts on board ship were frequent. Newton mounted guns and muskets on the desk aimed at the slaves’ quarters. Slaves were lashed and put in thumbscrews to keep them quiet.

In 1754, after a serious illness, he gave up seafaring altogether. In 1757, he applied for the Anglican priesthood. It was seven years before he was accepted. In 1764, he finally became a priest at Olney in Buckinghamshire.  He became well known for his pastoral care and respected by both Anglicans and nonconformists.

John Newton

John Newton

Newton began to deeply regret his involvement in the slave trade. After he became Rector of St Mary Woolnoth, in London in 1779, his advice was sought by many influential figures in Georgian society, among them the young M.P., William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was contemplating leaving politics for the ministry. Newton encouraged him to stay in Parliament and “serve God where he was”. Wilberforce took his advice, and spent the rest of his life working towards the abolition of slavery.

Willaim Wilberforce Quote

 

Worldly interests supported slavery. Evangelical Anglicans such as Newton, Hannah More, and most of all William Wilberforce were tireless advocates for ending slavery. Although derided by those who profited from slavery, the decades-long effort of these Anglicans led to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire and the use of the British navy to suppress slave trading throughout the world.

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The Preaching of Repentance: You Can’t Win

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Fire and Brimstone

 

Father Scharbach spoke of his attempts in his earlier years to preach fire and brimstone in the New York subway. (Although I have often thought that having to commute on the subway is sufficient penance for anything short of murder.) The attempt was not successful. On the other hand, Pope Francis has been criticized for emphasizing the mercy of God too much.

John Keble, one of the founders of the Oxford Movement, was also an astute pastor. He noticed that there was a difficulty in preaching that was not easy to overcome. The hearers often hear what they want to hear, not what they need to hear, no matter what the priest says. This is especially true during Lent.

What should be emphasized: the wrath of God against evil, or the mercy of God to sinners? Keble was frustrated:

Now in teaching repentance, there is of course a danger of erring on either side of this declaration. One many may speak, or seem to speak, of God’s wrath against sinners only; another only of His love and mercy to His redeemed; and even if both be fully set forth, according to their due proportions, both will not always be alike attended to.

The hearers will vary away with them, too commonly, only that part of what is said which suits their own temper and frame of mind. The hardened will lay hold of whatever is said on praise of God’s great and overflowing  mercy; while the bruised and wounded in heart, the tender conscience, will be over-much struck by the severe and awful part of the doctrine.

And thus it will too often follow, that each learner will dwell on just that portion of the instruction, which is own case did not so much require. So it is in reading or hearing the Bible: no wonder, therefore, that so it should be in men’s way of receiving the instruction and advice of Christ’s servants; no wonder if they often seem to be unduly severe, or overindulgent, when perhaps, if all they said was attended to, they would be found simply to have repeated God’s message.

This, then, is one great danger, whenever we preach, as in Lent we must preach, upon repentance: namely, that the hardened and tender consciences will often take to themselves what was properly meant for the other.

So we have the person who has missed mass in agonies of conscience while the Mafia don thinks that the priest will make everything right with God in return for a suitable donation. What’s a preacher to do?

Let us remember to pray for those who preach the word of God to us, that we will hear what we need to hear.

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The Burning Bush and the Eucharist

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Burning Bush 2

In his sermon “On the Holiness of Christ’s Body,” John Keble, one of the founders of the Oxford Movement, emphasized the reverence and awe with which we ought to approach the Body of the Lord by comparing to the Burning Bush.

“For the Body of the Jesus Christ is part of Him: taken, as the Creed saith, into His Divine Person.  We cannot think of it too religiously, we cannot speak of it with too much awe, we cannot behave toward it too reverentially. It is that, of which the burning bush, shewn to Moses in the Mount, was in some sort a type or figure. As the bush burned with fire, yet the bush was not consumed, so the Human Nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therein His blessed Body, hath the True Godhead ever abiding in it, and wonderfully imparting to it all its Fulness; yet doth it not therefore cease to be a true and real human Body, of the same nature, though without the same frailties and imperfections, as these our bodies, in which we live and move on earth.

Remember then, what was said to Moses when he drew near to gaze on the burning bush. “Put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” And remember also how Moses behaved; he “hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.”

How much more ought we sinners to hide our faces, and evermore practice the very deepest reverence, when we draw near to our Lord’s Body, the living Temple of His Godhead, in the Holy Eucharist; when we think of that Sacrament; when we read or speak of it, when we do but hear it named, but more especially when we are preparing ourselves, and most especially of all, when we are preparing to touch, to taste, to eat and drink It. That which we there receive is a Temple: and the Lord is in His Holy Temple : let all the earth keep silence, hold its breath, as it were, before Him out of reverence and godly fear.

It is a Holy Fire; the Fire of the Lord. And as it is in the nature of fire to take up and change into itself all that it lays hold on, so our Lord’s gracious purpose is to change us, as it were, into part of Himself.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote:

What we are told about the the monks of Cluny, around the year one thousand, is particularly striking. Whenever they went to receive Communion, they took their shoes off. They knew that the burning bush was here, the mystery before which Moses, in the desert, sank to his knees. The form may change, but what has to remain is the spirit of adoration.

The Romanesque miniature shows Moses at the Burning Bush. The Bush forms a mandorla, a symbol of the Uncreated Light of God breaking through into out world, and the mandorla encloses a very Byzantine Christ giving a blessing. Like much Romaneque art, it contains a touching, simple detail: the dog on the far left. A shepherd of course would have a dog, and Romaneque artists showed a love for the animal creation.

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The Gift of Tears

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Horeb photo

The Rock of Horeb

Pope Francis has preached about the gift of tears, a little known gift of the Holy Spirit:

“All of us have felt joy, sadness and sorrow in our lives, [but] have we wept during the darkest moment? Have we had that gift of tears that prepare the eyes to look, to see the Lord? We, too, can ask the Lord for the gift of tears. It is a beautiful grace … to weep praying for everything: for what is good, for our sins, for graces, for joy itself. … [It] prepares us to see Jesus.”

Today’s reading at Morning Prayer is from Exodus:

Therefore the people found fault with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you find fault with me? Why do you put the LORD to the proof?” But the people thirsted there for water, and the people murmured against Moses, and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?” So Moses cried to the LORD, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” And the LORD said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel; and take in your hand the rod with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, that the people may drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.

Horeb

Christina Rossetti in her poem about the gift of tears alludes to this episode at Horeb. She feels her heart a dry stone within her, unable to weep at Calvary, and asks God to smite her heart as Moses smote the rock at Horeb so that life-giving water might flow forth. Her life was filled with affliction, but she asks for the affliction that creates a tender heart.

AM I a stone and not a sheep
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy Cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved 5
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky, 10
A horror of great darkness at broad noon—
I, only I.

Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more 15
And smite a rock.

 

Francis said if we let ourselves cry, we can then recognize “the cry of the penitent, the cry of the brother and the sister who are looking upon so much human misery.”
 
But, he assured the congregation, “Mary will make us understand how great and humble this mystery [of the cross] is; how sweet as honey and how bitter as aloe. That she will be the one who accompanies us on this journey, which no one can take if not ourselves. Each one of us must take it. With the mother, weeping and on our knees.”
Mary Weeping
 
The solution to the refugee crisis in Europe is hard to see, but Francis calls on us to have tender hearts:
 
“Who has wept for the deaths of these brothers and sisters? Who has wept for the people who were on the boat? For the young mothers carrying their babies? For these men who wanted something to support their families? We are a society that has forgotten the experience of weeping, of ‘suffering with’; the globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep.”
 
“Who has wept? Who in today’s world has wept?” We must “ask Lord for the grace to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty in the world, in ourselves” to weep at the foot of the Cross.
Dead refugee child
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The “Double Agony” of Jesus

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Agony in the Garden 1

“Double agony” – this unusual phrase occurs in the hymn “Praise to the Holiest in the Height,” by John Henry Newman, which we sang at Mount Calvary the first Sunday of Lent:

O generous love! that he who smote
in Man, for man, the foe,
the double agony in Man
for man should undergo;

And in the garden secretly,
and on the Cross on high,
should teach his brethren, and inspire
to suffer and to die.

Jesus who is true God and true man, undergoes for the human race the “double agony,” the one in the garden and the one on the cross.

Newman placed equal emphasis on Jesus’ Agony in the Garden and on His Crucifixion as central to understanding the work of redemption. In his Discourse 16, Newman explains what the Agony in the Garden meant for Jesus:

“And now, my brethren, what was it He had to bear, when He thus opened upon His soul the torrent of this predestinated pain? Alas! He had to bear what is well known to us, what is familiar to us, but what to Him was woe unutterable. He had to bear that which is so easy a thing to us, so natural, so welcome, that we cannot conceive of it as of a great endurance, but which to Him had the scent and the poison of death—He had, my dear brethren, to bear the weight of sin; He had to bear your sins; He had to bear the sins of the whole world.

Sin is an easy thing to us; we think little of it; we do not understand how the Creator can think much of it; we cannot bring our imagination to believe that it deserves retribution, and, when even in this world punishments follow upon it, we explain them away or turn our minds from them. But consider what sin is in itself; it is rebellion against God; it is a traitor’s act who aims at the overthrow and death of His sovereign; it is that, if I may use a strong expression, which, could the Divine Governor of the world cease to be, would be sufficient to bring it about. Sin is the mortal enemy of the All-holy, so that He and it cannot be together; and as the All-holy drives it from His presence into the outer darkness, so, if God could be less than God, it is sin that would have power to make Him less.

And here observe, my brethren, that when once Almighty Love, by taking flesh, entered this created system, and submitted Himself to its laws, then forthwith this antagonist of good and truth, taking advantage of the opportunity, flew at that flesh which He had taken, and fixed on it, and was its death. The envy of the Pharisees, the treachery of Judas, and the madness of the people, were but the instrument or the expression of the enmity which sin felt towards Eternal Purity as soon as, in infinite mercy towards men, He put Himself within its reach. Sin could not touch His Divine Majesty; but it could assail Him in that way in which He allowed Himself to be assailed, that is, through the medium of His humanity. And in the issue, in the death of God incarnate, you are but taught, my brethren, what sin is in itself, and what it was which then was falling, in its hour and in its strength, upon His human nature, when He allowed that nature to be so filled with horror and dismay at the very anticipation.

There, then, in that most awful hour, knelt the Saviour of the world, putting off the defences of His divinity, dismissing His reluctant Angels, who in myriads were ready at His call, and opening His arms, baring His breast, sinless as He was, to the assault of His foe,—of a foe whose breath was a pestilence, and whose embrace was an agony. There He knelt, motionless and still, while the vile and horrible fiend clad His spirit in a robe steeped in all that is hateful and heinous in human crime, which clung close round His heart, and filled His conscience, and found its way into every sense and pore of His mind, and spread over Him a moral leprosy, till He almost felt Himself to be that which He never could be, and which His foe would fain have made Him.

Oh, the horror, when He looked, and did not know Himself, and felt as a foul and loathsome sinner, from His vivid perception of that mass of corruption which poured over His head and ran down even to the skirts of His garments! Oh, the distraction, when He found His eyes, and hands, and feet, and lips, and heart, as if the members of the Evil One, and not of God! Are these the hands of the Immaculate Lamb of God, once innocent, but now red with ten thousand barbarous deeds of blood? are these His lips, not uttering prayer, and praise, and holy blessings, but as if defiled with oaths, and blasphemies, and doctrines of devils? or His eyes, profaned as they are by all the evil visions and idolatrous fascinations for which men have abandoned their adorable Creator? And His ears, they ring with sounds of revelry and of strife; and His heart is frozen with avarice, and cruelty, and unbelief; and His very memory is laden with every sin which has been committed since the fall, in all regions of the earth, with the pride of the old giants, and the lusts of the five cities, and the obduracy of Egypt, and the ambition of Babel, and the unthankfulness and scorn of Israel.

Oh, who does not know the misery of a haunting thought which comes again and again, in spite of rejection, to annoy, if it cannot seduce? or of some odious and sickening imagination, in no sense one’s own, but forced upon the mind from without? or of evil knowledge, gained with or without a man’s fault, but which he would give a great price to be rid of at once and for ever? And adversaries such as these gather around Thee, Blessed Lord, in millions now; they come in troops more numerous than the locust or the palmer-worm, or the plagues of hail, and flies, and frogs, which were sent against Pharaoh. Of the living and of the dead and of the as yet unborn, of the lost and of the saved, of Thy people and of strangers, of sinners and of saints, all sins are there…..

None was equal to the weight but God; sometimes before Thy saints Thou hast brought the image of a single sin, as it appears in the light of Thy countenance, or of venial sins, not mortal; and they have told us that the sight did all but kill them, nay, would have killed them, had it not been instantly withdrawn. The Mother of God, for all her sanctity, nay by reason of it, could not have borne even one brood of that innumerable progeny of Satan which now compasses Thee about.

It is the long history of a world, and God alone can bear the load of it. Hopes blighted, vows broken, lights quenched, warnings scorned, opportunities lost; the innocent betrayed, the young hardened, the penitent relapsing, the just overcome, the aged failing; the sophistry of misbelief, the wilfulness of passion, the obduracy of pride, the tyranny of habit, the canker of remorse, the wasting fever of care, the anguish of shame, the pining of disappointment, the sickness of despair; such cruel, such pitiable spectacles, such heartrending, revolting, detestable, maddening scenes; nay, the haggard faces, the convulsed lips, the flushed cheek, the dark brow of the willing slaves of evil, they are all before Him now; they are upon Him and in Him. They are with Him instead of that ineffable peace which has inhabited His soul since the moment of His conception.

They are upon Him, they are all but His own; He cries to His Father as if He were the criminal, not the victim; His agony takes the form of guilt and compunction. He is doing penance, He is making confession, He is exercising contrition, with a reality and a virtue infinitely greater than that of all saints and penitents together; for He is the One Victim for us all, the sole Satisfaction, the real Penitent, all but the real sinner.”

Agony in the Gardden 2

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Forgiveness Sunday

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George Herbert Forgivness 2

The Eastern Churches do not begin Lent with Ash Wednesday, but with Forgiveness Sunday. Wesley Smith describes it:

Orthodox Christians enter Lent with a special post-Liturgy or evening vespers service that launches us into “Clean Monday,” the first day of the rigorous Lenten fast….

The forgiveness service begins as any other vespers, but it soon changes with different hymns and more mournful prayers. In the midst of the service, Lent begins as the choir cries out in earnest supplication:

Turn not away thy face from thy servant; for I am in trouble: hear me speedily. Attend to my soul, and deliver it. 
From the ends of the earth I cried unto thee. 
I shall be protected under the cover of thy wings. 
I will praise thy name forever.
As they mournfully sing, the altar cloth is changed to Lenten purple and the priest changes into dark vestments to symbolize mourning.

At the service’s end, our first Lenten act is to ask from and offer forgiveness to everyone present—not collectively, but individually from person, to person, to person. This is one of the most powerful moments of the Church year. One by one, each parishioner bows or prostrates, first before the priest, and then each other, asking, “Forgive me, a sinner.”

Each responds with a bow or prostration, asking also for forgiveness and assuring, “God forgives.” Each then exchanges the kiss of peace.

The service is a healing balm. It is hard to bear grudges when all have shared such an intimate mutual humbling. Indeed, Forgiveness Vespers is emotionally intense, tears often flow and hugs of true reconciliation are common.

Foregivness sunday 1

No man is an island. Our sins wound all members of the church and indeed all creation. An Orthodox akathist confesses

We are to blame for the calamities in the world, for the sufferings of dumb creatures, and for the diseases and torments of innocent children, for through the fall of man the beatitude and beauty of all creation has been marred. O Christ our God, greatest of innocent Sufferers! Thou alone canst forgive all. Forgive, then, all and everything, and grant to the world its primordial prosperity, that the living and the dead may rejoice and cry:

ALLELUIA!

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Forward into Lent

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George Herrbert portrait

 

The Anglican Parson George Herbert (1593-1633) in his poem “Lent” counsels us to follow the Church’s directions for Lent. The Church of England had preserved the Lenten fast; the Puritans, although they fasted, rejected the idea of a prescribed time for fasting. The Anglican Church to a large extent preserved the rhythms of the church year, the feasts and fasts, because “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven… a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”

Welcome dear feast of Lent: who loves not thee,
He loves not Temperance, or Authority,
But is compos’d of passion.
The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church says, now:
Give to thy Mother, what thou wouldst allow
To ev’ry Corporation.

The humble soul compos’d of love and fear
Begins at home, and lays the burden there,
When doctrines disagree,
He says, in things which use hath justly got,
I am a scandal to the Church, and not
The Church is so to me.

True Christians should be glad of an occasion
To use their temperance, seeking no evasion,
When good is seasonable;
Unless Authority, which should increase
The obligation in us, make it less,
And Power itself disable.

Besides the cleanness of sweet abstinence,
Quick thoughts and motions at a small expense,
A face not fearing light:
Whereas in fulness there are sluttish fumes,
Sour exhalations, and dishonest rheums,
Revenging the delight.

Then those same pendant profits, which the spring
And Easter intimate, enlarge the thing,
And goodness of the deed.
Neither ought other men’s abuse of Lent
Spoil the good use; lest by that argument
We forfeit all our Creed.

It’s true, we cannot reach Christ’s forti’eth day;
Yet to go part of that religious way,
Is better than to rest:
We cannot reach our Saviour’s purity;
Yet we are bid, ‘Be holy ev’n as he, ‘
In both let’s do our best.

Who goeth in the way which Christ hath gone,
Is much more sure to meet with him, than one
That travelleth by-ways:
Perhaps my God, though he be far before,
May turn and take me by the hand, and more:
May strengthen my decays.

Yet Lord instruct us to improve our fast
By starving sin and taking such repast,
As may our faults control:
That ev’ry man may revel at his door,
Not in his parlour; banqueting the poor,
And among those his soul.

I think the stanza which we might best take to heart is this one:

It’s true, we cannot reach Christ’s forti’eth day;
Yet to go part of that religious way,
Is better than to rest:
We cannot reach our Saviour’s purity;
Yet we are bid, ‘Be holy ev’n as he, ‘
In both let’s do our best.

We cannot fast from food for forty days, or attain the holiness of Jesus, but “in both let’s do our best.”

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The Meredith Simons’ Guide to Race in the Movies

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Meredith Simons, a law student, who has a bright future in academia or the Democratic party, has discovered to her horror that “white” actors play “non-white” roles in plays and movies.

In a Washington Post article Simons includes in this series of racist miscastings Anthony Hopkins (Welsh descent) who plays Zorro. This implies that the Spanish are non-white, which is probably news to the Spanish. Perhaps Stevens follows the British dictum that wogs begin at Calais. Or can only persons of the same nationality as a character play that character: only Danes can play Hamlet; only Italians, Romeo and Juliet; only Brits, Henrys; only Macedonians, Cleopatra, etc. Of course, this would close off all but one role in Shakespeare to blacks. And opera! Trouser roles! A lot Italians pretending to be Chinese and Egyptian and even Scottish! Germans cast as Norse gods! Quelle horreur!

Simons is treading on especially dangerous ground when she points to the character of Jesus. Can only a Jew play Jesus? Also she doesn’t seem to consider Jews white. She seems never to have met a blond, blue eyed Jew. And King David was probably red-haired, and pale like other red heads. And whom would she qualify as a Jew? Would she use matrilineal descent? The Nuremberg Laws? 1% genes? Those commentators who agree with her tie themselves in knots about whether Jews and Arabs and Italians and Egyptians are “white.”

The hundreds of comments have pointed out the dozens of factual errors in her article: e.g, she condemns allowing Valentino to play an Arab in The Sheik  – but the sheikh in the end turns out to be a European. Simons’ spelling is also weak; she refers to a person of Nigerian “dissent.”

As a law student she may have never read or seen a single play by Shakespeare (or perhaps by anyone else) She may have missed the fact that AN ACTOR IS A PERSON WHO PRETENDS TO BE SOMEONE HE IS NOT. The better an actor imitates a character different from him, the better an actor he is. Shakespeare’s actors were all male.  None of them were women, or Jews, or Moors, or Italians, or Danes, or bears, or monsters, or sprites, or kings, or dukes, or friars etc. They used make up and costumes as part of the act. That’s what actors do.

Much of the fun of a play is the implicit distance from reality. Let’s pretend – but we know it is pretense. In As You Like It in Shakespeare’s time men played women disguised as men. A current production of that play has an all-female cast: women playing men playing women playing men.

Or perhaps Simons doesn’t realize that plays and movies are not reality, reality being a concept that she has a distant and hostile relationship with. That is a good possibility. The Post, like other liberal organizations, thinks that reality is a fascist patriarchal plot. When a male can declare himself a woman (or a chicken or a Martian, or whatever he chooses) and the Obama administration will force everyone to accept it, we know that reality has been abandoned. But a European on stage can’t pretend to be an Arab, or anyone whom Simons has decided should be played only by an appropriately  swarthy person of the right race-nationality-ethnicity -appearance.

There are some good comments at the Post blog.

Typical Washington Post story: “Blah blah RACE blah blah blah RACE blah RACE RACE blah blah RACE.” As for me, I am officially RACED OUT!

Look for the upcoming Post headline: “How The Quarterback You Root For In The Super Bowl Reveals If You Are A Racist.”

Errol Flynn was not an 11th-century Englishman, so how could he possibly play Robin Hood? How could he understand the struggles that Robin Hood went through? His use of a longbow was cultural appropriation!

Don’t forget all those Klingons played by white and black actors. Many Vulcans too.

You forgot about Vulcans and other aliens. Why did Hollywood cast Alan Rickman as an alien in Galaxy Quest when we have genuine aliens like Johnny Depp and the entire Post editorial staff?

And let’s not forget that shameful Dustin Hoffman running around dressed up like a woman in “Tootsie”. I mean REALLY….

And in other news, Bollywood uses Indians to depict characters of non-Indian descent, whatever the Chinese _ollywood is uses Chinese to depict characters of non-Chinese descent, and perhaps most alarmingly, George Lucas uses humans to depict non-humans.
““Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” 2014: White actor William Fichtner played Eric Sacks, a villain who’s typically depicted as Japanese; he’ll reprise the role in future movies.”

You know, the actors playing the turtle are not actually mutated turtles, and neither is the rat a rat.

So? According to this politically correct bs who should have played the character in 10,000 BC?

you mean as in CHI-RAQ which is a GREEK comedy by Aristophanes about white people in Greece doing naughty things? Cultural appropriation anyone?  It could very well be the pot calling the kettle…..

What about all the gay actors playing heterosexuals, and vice-versa? I sometimes find that funny. In one show that ended recently, the main star who played a debonair ladies’ man is gay in real life and a co-star who played a gay person in the show is heterosexual in real life.

Simons’ article is such a demonstration of liberal inanity, ignorance, and stupidity that one suspects that lurking in the bowels of the Washington Post there is a crypto-conservative who commissioned this article to disgrace liberals.

But probably this comment explains the article:

Hmmmm, my boss gave me an assignment to write an article that will get as many “clicks” as possible. How about a someone who grew up in a Northern state making fun of how DCers handle snow in a condescending and idiotic way? Oh, someone beat me to it. I know, how about an article inferring that Mike Myers shouldn’t be able to play anyone but a Caucasian Canadian? I mean he wasn’t really a young kid living in his parents’ basement. As an American I am completely offended that Kate Winslett was cast as an American in one film and a German in another. I’m going to picket Rosamund Pike’s house because she was cast an American in both Gone Girl and Jack Reacher. This can’t happen.

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The Presentation in the Temple

in Liturgy, Uncategorized No Comments Tags:

 

At Candlemas, the Feast of the Presentation, the foreshadowings of Calvary grow stronger.Presentation

Simeon proclaims:

“Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel,
and for a sign that is spoken against
(and a sword will pierce through your own soul also),
that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.” (Luke 2:34-35)

The seventeenth-century English poet Joseph Beaumont wrote:

May we have leave to ask, illustrious Mother,

Why thou dost turtles bring

For thy Son’s offering,

And rather giv’st not one lamb for another? It seems that golden shower which th’other day

The forward faithful East

Poured at thy feet, made haste

Through some devout expence to find its way. O precious poverty, which canst appear

Richer to holy eyes

Than any golden prize,

And sweeter art than frankincense and myrrh! Come then, that silver, which thy turtles wear

Upon their wings, shall make

Precious thy gift, and speak

That Son of thine, like them, all pure and fair. But know that heaven will not be long in debt;

No, the Eternal Dove

Down from his nest above

Shall come, and on thy son’s dear head shall sit.

 

Heaven will not have Him ransomed, heaven’s law

Makes no exception

For lambs, and such a one

Is He: a fairer Lamb heaven never saw. He must be offered, or the world is lost:

The whole world’s ransom lies

In this great sacrifice;

And He will pay its debt, whate’er it cost. Nor shall these turtles unrepayed be,

These turtles which today

Thy love for Him did pay:

Thou ransom’dst Him, and He will ransom thee. A dear and full redemption will He give

Thee and the world: this Son,

And none but this alone

By His own death can make His Mother live.

“Consecrate to me every first-born that opens the womb among the Israelites both of man and beast, for it belongs to me” (Exodus 13:2).

And when the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord  (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”)  and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.” (Luke 2:22-24)

Joseph Beaumont (1616-1699) was an Anglican clergyman; he was a student at Peterhouse with the poet Richard Crashaw and after the Restoration a royal chaplain. This poem and its tender address to Mary indicates that he wished to preserve Catholic veneration of Mary, and even prayers to her.

“The faithful forward East” refers to the three kings and their gift of gold, “that golden shower,” which Mary, because she made the offering of the poor, no longer had, and must therefore have spent in “some devout expence.” The turtles (turtledoves) are silver and replace the gold of the Magi, and the mention of the turtles leads to the Eternal Dove, the Holy Spirit, which descends on Jesus at the Baptism in the Jordan.

In the paradoxes on Christianity, poverty is richer than wealth, and Jesus alone by his death can give life to His mother, the reversal of the course of nature.

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Domenic Cieri: He’s Back!

in Baltimore, Church finances, clergy sex abuse scandal, homosexuality No Comments Tags: , , , , , ,

Domenic Cieri 3

HI, GUYS!

Fans of Domenic Cieri will be happy to hear that he is back as a priest in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. He is a chaplain at St. Joseph’s Medical Center, a division of the University of Maryland Hospitals. Those who have followed his career will remember that in 2007 he ran afoul of the Archdiocese because of his life-long fight against poverty. He had seen poverty in Baltimore:

I can also remember riding in the back seat of the family car going to my grandparents and passing through the poorer sections of Baltimore City. During the heat of the summer, I can remember seeing African Americans sitting on their steps, sweating in squalor. My heart went out to them.

He had seen poverty when he worked for a year in Tanzania, and imagined what life would have been like if he had been born there:

If I had been born in Musoma, Tanzania as a native African I might not have survived infancy. I would have lived in a mud hut with a thatched roof and dirt floor. There would have been clothes contributed from Europe or the United States to hide my nakedness once I attended school. School would have lasted 5 or 6 years. I would raise skinny cattle and goats, grown and eaten ugali porridge, and tried to have children. My gayness could get me killed if revealed. I would have to get married or become a priest. If I succeeded becoming a priest, I would have a privileged life in the community. Nonetheless, I would spend most of my life sick with malaria, dysentery, hepatitis or any number of diseases. I would probably die by the time I was 40.

Inspired by Scarlett O’Hare, he must have declared “As God is my witness, I will never be poor again!”

His fifteen-year pastorate at well-to-do St. Bernadatte’s, Severn, enabled him to fight poverty by appointing his friends to the finance committee and having them pay him substantial supplements to his salary (see previous blog for all details).

The Rev. Domenic L. Cieri, who led St. Bernadette Catholic Church in Severn for nearly 15 years, received salary and Mass stipends above the scales approved by the archdiocese, according to an audit conducted in October. Archdiocese spokesman Sean Caine said Cieri also received a housing allowance to live in northern Baltimore County, although his parish has a rectory.
For the fiscal year that ended last June, Cieri earned nearly $48,000 a year, about 70 percent more than the $28,122 that the archdiocese says he was to earn as a pastor ordained for 25 years.
In addition, Cieri received $6,300 in Mass stipends. Priests have the choice of receiving Mass stipends for individual Masses or a lump sum of $2,000, an amount set by the archdiocese, Caine said.
He was also reimbursed nearly $36,000 for rectory expenses, though Caine said the priest did not live in the rectory attached to the church but rather at a house in Baldwin, in northern Baltimore County. And he received more than $14,000 as a housing allowance, which Caine said is not normally given to priests assigned to churches with rectories.

(With another priest, Larry Johnson, Cieri co-owns a house in an expensive suburb, Baldwin, Maryland, on the far side of the metropolitan area from Severn. Zillow values the 3,200 sq. ft. house at $458,000.)

This was not criminal, but was against Archdiocesan policy, and certainly looks a tad greedy.

His monetizing his pastorate qualified him to become a financial adviser at Smith Barney and First Financial Group.

Domenic Cieri 2
While Cieri was at St. Bernadette’s and was able to detach himself from his house in hunt country, he focused on making St. Bernadette’s a gay-friendly parish, as his pastoral associate explained:

St. Bernadette Church in Severn, Maryland, has one of the most successful ministries to gay and lesbian Catholics in the country. Each year for the past six or seven years Pastor Domenic Cieri and his pastoral associate, Ann McDonald, have offered six-week programs to talk about “the good news the church has to offer, areas of church teaching that cause pain for homosexuals, and what they need in order to feel they can come home to the church.”

St Bernadatte Gay Ministry 2
“We felt really strongly that this was the call of the gospel,” says McDonald. “We needed an actual process by which we reached out to gay and lesbian Catholics because they weren’t necessarily coming to church. We invited them to reclaim their rightful place in the church.” Hence the program is christened Reclaim.
At first McDonald had to educate the 1,200 parish families about making the community more welcoming. She put notes in the bulletin and hung a rainbow flag in the parish office, the rainbow symbolizing respect for gays and lesbians.

In his autobiography Cieri explains:

I identify as a white, middle class, suburban, gay male who has lived as a practicing Catholic. I include all these dimensions of my personhood because I believe that none of them taken singularly totally describes who I am. In all the ways I describe myself I have a privileged place in the world, except as a gay man. It is fortunate and unfortunate that no one can tell that I am gay. I must self-disclose. This makes part of me invisible.

So he self-discloses:

You might say that I am a soft male (my words). I am not macho and never have been.
About the time of puberty I was very aware of being attracted to males. This was somewhat distressing. Even though I wanted to be a priest, I still had a desire to have a family. I began to wonder what it would be like to be a girl. Then I could get married and have a family with the boy of my dreams. This gave me a small insight into the other gender. I decided that I liked being a male. It was more me.

He also likes other males. His You page (which is public) reveals that he has subscribed to a wide range of channels: Catholic News Service, Top 10 Things You Need to Know about Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’, Walt Disney’s The Tortoise and the Hare, Young Hollywood, Hugh Jackman’s Opening Number: 20Tube 09 Oscars and also

  • Cute Males Studio: In Between Men – Episode 5 – Muscles and Manbags by PIANETAGAY
  • MANTASTICMALES2011.This is a gay channel, featuring videos with homosexual or hot guy content. Slide vids, fan vids, gay themed music vids, short films and excerpts with a similar theme

Cieri is ecumenical

  • Coming Out: I’m Mormon, Gay and have a bright future by Jamison Manwaring

Cieri has travelled extensively

I had the opportunity to visit Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Panama, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Israel, and Turkey.

and therefore has international interests:

  • TheHorizonSeries. Australia’s Hot Gay Web Drama!
  • JayBellBooks. Just me and a bunch of gay books and movies. Oh, and the occasional German husband as well.
  • CanadianJewel (two weeks ago). Just your average guy wanting to post video’s, typically gay themed, for people to watch, comment, discuss, and enjoy.

Cieri knows Italian:

  • GETwebserie. Benvenuti sul canale di G&T: la webserie gay italiana.
  • PianetaGay.com. Una web-community dinamica, un magazine aggiornato con le ultimissime notizie dal mondo gay, recensioni di libri gay e cinema gay e molto altro ancora.

Some of his recent subscriptions are

  • brandenblinn. Branden Blinn creates, produces and distributes high quality content LGBT media.
  • Mark Raimondo. Videos about me and my life (which consist of my boyfriend, traveling, puppies, food, working out and other lovely things)
  • MY COMING OUT EXPERIENCE by Mark Raimondo. OK, I know everyone and their gay uncle has a coming out video but my coming out anniversary was last week and I thought it was fittingncora

Cieri likes them young:Domenic Cieri 1

  • BoyonBoyLoving. A selection of clips with boy on boy loving.

And many, many more. When does he find time to watch all these?
One might feel sympathy for someone in Cieri’s position: a gay Catholic boy who decided to enter the priesthood to help the poor. But his main way of helping the poor was to make sure he himself was never poor. Guys, gay or straight or anything else, have a problem with celibacy, and gays, being male, also respond to visual stimuli. I understand the temptations.  But what is a celibate priest doing watching gay pornography?

The Archdiocese of Baltimore is desperate for priests. The clergy is aging and is not being replaced. I was told there will be one ordination next year and one the year after that.
As we know from the Donatist controversy, the validity of the sacraments is not affected by the sins of the priest. So the Archdiocese is hoping that Cieri, whatever his problems, confines his ministrations to his specified duties, and keeps his hands off attractive accounts and attractive young males at the hospital. The Archdiocese better be right, because Cieri has left a trail that calls his character into question.

 

(PS. I wrote to the Archdiocese of Baltimore about Cieri. No reply. It looks like he may have removed some of the worst stuff from his websites – but I printed it out. For what gay priests can do to a diocese, see Altoona-Johnstown.)

 

 

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The Tongues of Angels and of Men: Iubilatio

in Liturgy, Music, Uncategorized 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , ,

As Men Rejoice at the Harvest

Orchestral version

From The Tender Land

Catholic and Protestant Reformers both sought to preserve the intelligibility of the text in sung church services, the text medieval music sometimes obscured.

Paul had dealt with a similar problem in Corinth, where speaking in tongues seems to dominate the liturgical assemblies. He expresses strong reservations about speaking in tongues, because they are not intelligible:

“Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray for the power to interpret. 14 For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unproductive. 15 What should I do then? I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the mind also; I will sing praise with the spirit, but I will sing praise with the mind also. 16 Otherwise, if you say a blessing with the spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say the “Amen” to your thanksgiving, since the outsider does not know what you are saying? 17 For you may give thanks well enough, but the other person is not built up. 18 I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you; 19 nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue.”

But there is another tradition in the church which does not confine praise to intelligibility.

In addition to the music that does not conflict with the intelligibility of the text (e.g. Merbecke’s Mass setting), Mount Calvary also uses Gregorian chant settings of the Proper of the Mass, settings that contain melismas (many notes on one syllable), as well as anthems in Latin (which even for us who have a smattering of Latin are not immediately intelligible) as well as organ preludes and postludes that have no text at all, and sometimes no reference to a hymn tune.  These represent types of church music that fell into disfavor, especially among Calvinists, shortly after the English Reformation, but were revived by the Oxford Movement.

The melismas, especially at the end of the alleluia, may have a direct ancestry in the jubilatio (although musicologists are uncertain about this) but in any case they resemble the jubilatio. What, may you ask, is a jubilatio?

In the early church there was the gift of tongues, which seems to have died out by Augustine’s time (354-430), but there was another type of singing which did not use human words. In his commentary on the psalms Augustine describes it and implies it is a practice in the church:

“I am about to say what ye know. One who jubilates, uttereth not words, but it is a certain sound of joy without words: for it is the expression of a mind poured forth in joy, expressing, as far as it is able, the affection, but not compassing the feeling. A man rejoicing in his own exultation, after certain words which cannot be uttered or understood, bursteth forth into sounds of exultation without words, so that it seemeth that he indeed doth rejoice with his voice itself, but as if filled with excessive joy cannot express in words the subject of that joy.”

“To manifest his joy, the man does not use words that can be pronounced or understood, but bursts forth into sounds of exaltation without words… What is jubilation? Joy that cannot be pronounced or understood, but bursts forth into sounds of exaltation without words.”

Jubilation is a natural activity, an expression of deep and profound joy. Augustine explains why we do it and should do it:

“See how He Himself provides you with a way of singing. Do not search for words, as if you could find a lyric which would give God pleasure. Sing to Him “with songs of joy.” This is singing well to God, just singing with songs of joy.

“But how is this done? You must first understand that words cannot express the things that are sung by the heart. Take the case of people singing while harvesting in the fields or in the vineyards or when any other strenuous work is in progress [play Copeland’s The Promise of Living]. Although they begin by giving expression to their happiness in sung words, yet shortly there is a change. As if so happy that words can no longer express what they feel, they discard the restricting syllables. They burst out into a simple sound of joy, of jubilation. Such a cry of joy is a sound signifying that the heart is bringing to birth what it cannot utter in words.

“Now, who is more worthy of such a cry of jubilation than God himself, whom all words fail to describe? If words will not serve, and yet you must not remain silent, what else can you do but cry out for joy? Your heart must rejoice beyond words, soaring into an immensity of gladness, unrestrained by syllabic bonds. Sing to him with jubilation.”

John Chrysostom (349-407) praises jubilation:

“Do not look for words, as if you could put into words things that please God. Sing in jubilation: singing well to God means, in fact, just this: singing in jubilation.”

Centuries later the Benedictine Rupert of Deutz 1075-1130 A.D.) sees jubilation as an essential part of praise:

“By the term jubilus we understand that which neither in words, nor syllables, nor letters, nor speech, is it possible to express or comprehend, namely, how much man ought to praise God.”

Jubilation became rare, but Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) seems to have experienced it:

“Amongst these favours, at once painful and pleasant, Our Lord sometimes causes in the soul a certain jubilation and a strange and mysterious kind of prayer. If He bestows this grace on you, praise Him fervently for it; I describe it so that you may know that it is something real. I believe that the faculties of the soul are closely united to God but that He leaves them at liberty to rejoice in their happiness together with the senses, although they do not know what they are enjoying nor how they do so. This may sound nonsense but it really happens.

Augustine knew that “words cannot express the things that are sung by the heart.” We feel a joy that is not irrational, but that is beyond words. Jubilatio is a song of praise without words. Absolute music, whether by means of the human voice or instruments, is not a way of imparting doctrine, but is a way of expressing something that is not contrary to reason, but beyond it.

 

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One Syllable, One Note: Merbecke and the Mass

in Anglicans, Music 1 Comment Tags: , , , , ,

Book of Common Prayer Noted

At Mount Calvary we have been using John Merbecke’s setting of the ordinary of the mass: the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. In the sixteenth century both Catholics and Reformers disliked church music that obscured the text. The chief offender in chant was the melisma, many notes on the same syllable.  Church authorities of all persuasions maintained that the text, the Word, was more important than the music, or at least should be of equal importance. Therefore both Catholics and Reformers proposed limiting music to one note per syllable, as much chant in fact already did.

Melismatic Sarum

Sarum Chant with melismas

Catholics were concerned that complicated music, sometimes of a secular origin, was obscuring the text and becoming mere entertainment. The Council Fathers considered banning polyphony for that reason. The legend is that Palestrina composed the Missa Papae Marcelli  (1562) in an intelligible, declamatory style  and thereby saved polyphony for Catholicism.

In 1607 the composer Agostino Agazzari wrote:

“Music of the older kind is no longer in use, both because of the confusion and babel of the words, arising from the long and intricate imitations, and because it has no grace, for with all the voices singing, one hears neither period nor sense, these being interfered with and covered up by imitations…And on this account music would have come very near to being banished from the Holy Church by a sovereign pontiff [Pius IV], had not Giovanni Palestrina founded the remedy, showing that the fault and error lay, not with the music, but with the composers, and composing in confirmation of this the Mass entitled Missa Papae Marcelli.”

Reformers even more strongly emphasized intelligibility. Therefore the liturgy should be in English and with very simple music. Thomas Cranmer wrote of the musical settings for the new English liturgy:

“But in mine opinion, the song that shall be made thereunto would not be full of notes but, as near as may be, for every syllable a note.”

This continued to be emphasized by Anglicans. In 1571 Winchester Cathedral instructed;

“Item, that in the quire no note shall be used in song that shall drown any word or syllable, or draw out in length or shorten any word or syllable otherwise than by the nature of the word as it is pronounced in common speech, whereby the sentence cannot be perceived by the hearers. And also the often reports or repeating of notes with words or sentences whereby the sense may be hindered in the hearer shall not be used.”

Merbecke CreedMerbecke’s Creed

John Merbecke (1510-1585), a chorister and organ at Winchester, was an ardent Protestant and was almost executed under Queen Mary. He followed the new musical policy. Merbecke adopted a very simplified plainchant for his setting of the Book of Common Prayer (1550).  It was used only briefly, because under Queen Elizabeth all service music fell into disfavor. Merbecke’s setting of the mass was revived by the Oxford Movement; it is this that we have been using. Some branches of Anglicanism celebrate Merbecke’s feast day on November 21.

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The Many Loves of Ann Marie Saportas

in Alexandre Family, Saportas, Uncategorized 1 Comment Tags: , , , , ,

Frederick Francis Alexandre

Frederick Francis and Regina Matilda

at the 1938 Horse Show Ball

My wife’s great uncle, Frederick Francis Alexandre (1894-1968) married Regina Mathilde Saportas (1898-1957), and therefore my wife is related to the Saportas family. They seem to be descended from Sephardic Jews who made their way to Brazil and married into the Maxwell (of Maxwell House Coffee) family. Regina’s niece was Ann Marie Saportas (1923 -?). As I said in a previous blog, whenever a newspaper gives a full page to one’s marital affairs, it is a bad sign. Ann Marie managed to get two full-page stories and mentioned in a tragic story. The newspapers were always interested in the American version of morganatic marriages, the unions of Society women and working class men.

Mts Saprtas and Anne Marie

Mrs. Marion Tiffany Saportas and Ann Marie

The Course of True Love

Fell in Love with Janitor

Anne Marie Saportas

Ann Marie at Coral Beach, Bermuda 1938

Ann Marie was the daughter of stockbroker Martin Brown Saportas and Marion Tiffany. After her divorce from Martin, Marion set up housekeeping for herself and put Ann Marie, fifteen years old, in her own hotel apartment, and enrolled her in a business school to learn typing (perhaps the alimony was not all Marion had hoped for). This was a mistake. There Ann Marie fell for the twenty-year-old Gordon Watson Gillam, the son of a Scottish stationary engineer (i. e., janitor).

George Watson Gillam

Gordon Watson Gillam

Six months after meeting George, Ann Marie wrote to him (September 1938):

Just think, only seven more days and we will be off to Maryland, Delaware, or Virginia, or someplace. It is all so wonderful I can hardly believe it. I was looking up Tennessee on the map and we’ll never get there.

How much did you get for the dear old typewriter? For goodness sake, whatever you do, don’t go and spend it for then we’d be lost – and save all you can.

Gordon pawned the typewriter, and with that money the lovers eloped to Elkton, Maryland, East Coast Capital of quickie marriages.

The marriage and honeymoon were over in a weekend, and Gordon and Ann Marie returned to business school, Gordon to his parents house and Ann Marie to her hotel apartment. They did not inform anyone of the new marital arrangement.

But Marion came across one of Ann Marie’s letters to her new husband and was extremely unhappy. She wrote to Gordon:

I have just heard from my daughter of her marriage to you in September. I can’t tell you what an awful thing this was for you to do. You know she is only 15 a minor you took her out of State and married her a criminal offense. I think the best thing to do for both of you is to have it annulled as soon as possible, and until that is done I expect you to leave her alone, not phone or write or try to see her.

Please send me the marriage license immediately I will expect it by Friday or I will send my lawyer over to see you and your parents, if you have any.

It won’t be very pleasant for you if I have to go to law about it, which I shall do if you don’t do what I demand. You know you have broken the Mann Act, as any lawyer will tell you.

Marion rusticated Ann Marie to her aunt’s in Lawrenceville, Long Island. There Ann Marie wrote to Gordon:

Now, we have to sometime so why not now discussing the practicle [sic] side of things. We have to live someplace, don’t forget.

Ann Marie continued to be inconsolable.

Ann Marie Saportas to Gordon letters

 

But then something happened. The annulment was in process and Gordon wrote back

Ann Marie Saportas letter from Gordon

However, Gordon changed his mind and tried to contest the annulment, describing the last incident as a lover’s spat. But the court granted the annulment, and in October 1944 the lovelorn Gordon enlisted in the Army. When war came he rose in the ranks.

Gordon W, Gillam

2nd Lt. Gordon Gillam

Luck smiled on Second Lieutenant Gordon W. Gillam of Astoria when the Joseph Hewes went down off North Africa and he smiled right back, Gillam made shore safely, stopped at a bar In Casa Blanca for a drink and met a shipmate who carried word home to the army officer’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Gillam of 27-72 12th street, that their son was safe.

Gordon was promoted to Captain and received the Bronze Star and the Italian Order of the Crown Chevalier.  But his luck ran out. He is listed as a war casualty. He died June 28, 1946 and is buried in the American Cemetery at Florence.

 

Double Trouble

Anne Marie Saportas bigamy

Wartime often produces matrimonial muddles (as was shown in the very touching movie The Miracle at Morgan’s Creek). Ann Marie got involved in an interesting one.

Ann Marie secretly married Marine Corps flying officer Lieutenant Allen Thomas Sturges in Vermont in July 1941. Sturges was a “playboy, ” a “socialite,” a member of what my late mother-in-law called Café Society; they were not respectable.

Allen Thomas Sturges II

Allen Thomas Sturges

Sturges went off to war, Ann Marie got lonely, and in early 1942 she married First Sergeant Jerome Mark; but she neglected the formality of a divorce from Sturges. Four days after the marriage Jerome was shipped overseas. When her mother Marion heard of the arrangement, she expressed her bewilderment. Ann Marie explained why Sturges didn’t count:  “Why we went really married. We were just kids.”

In 1944 a man called her and asked if she were the wife of Allen Thomas Sturges. This time she said yes. She learned that the man on the phone was the father of Judith Scott, who had married Sturges, who had told her he was single. So Ann Marie had married Allen and then married Mark.  Allen had married Ann Marie and then married Judith. No divorces intervened. Double bigamy?

Sturges received a medical discharge from the Marine Corp. In 1945 he was tried for stealing diamond cuff links and a gold cigarette case from the home of actor Bruce Cabot. Sturges pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity; he was fined $500 and ordered to leave California.

In 1949 Sturges was working in upstate New York for HydroCarbon Reesarch and then moved to Brownsville. Texas, where he worked in the aluminum welding division in at a plant his company was helping to build. Soon local police were seeking Sturges on charges of removing a mortgaged automobile and passing bad checks. He had forged Ann Marie‘s name to several checks.

In October 1949 Sturges drove the stolen car to Houston and checked into an expensive hotel under the name of Stevens. Through mutual friends Sturges met Braniff airline hostess Marion Yturria and told her of his legal problems in Brownsville. He told her “it would be a lot less worry for everyone if I just ended it all.” She was frightened; he telephoned her at her office and she called the police. They told her not to go home alone; she took two friends, and they discovered that Sturges had broken in and shot himself through the right temple. Yturria was greatly upset by the indent, but she told the papers

He was a gentleman the whole time I knew him. He made no amorous attempts toward me.  I don’t think you can blame anybody but the war. It’s just an unfortunate tragedy that could have happened to anyone.

He survived, but the bullet lodged in his brain. To his surgeon’s astonishment, Sturges survived and recovered,

He had left three suicide notes in his pocket, one with identifying information, one to Miss Yturria:

I want to thank you for your help. You are the best friend a man could want – if I had known you longer I would have loved you – But, you are too good a woman for a person like me – Just say a prayer for me once in a while.

And one to his mother:

My last will and testament: To my mother I will everything, insurance, etc. Mu body must be cremated. Mother, I love you.

His mother expressed doubts that Allen had shot himself, despite the three suicide notes, and she admitted that he was suffering from a “war neurosis.” Four hours before the shooting, a New York paper had received an anonymous tip that Sturges had killed himself, but there were no long distance calls from Houston to that newspaper. Mrs. Taveniere said she had gotten a telephone call that gamblers had pursued her son to Houston and shot him. But the allegations were never resolved.

Allen Thomas Sturges

Allen Thomas Sturges 1955

Sturges, “unemployed mechanical engineer“ in 1955 was sent to Bellevue for observation after he robbed an East Side bar. He died in 2002.

 

The Last Ones

Ann Marie married  Wayne W. Dickinson on October 1959 in California. Joseph Chamberlain was Ann Marie’s (third? fourth? fifth), in any case, last husband. They got hitched in Nevada in 1970.

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Fighting over Faith and Works

in Protestantism, theology No Comments Tags: , , , ,

Faith vs Works

Human beings love to fight and to form factions, and Christians alas are no exception. Paul warns against meaningless speculations and controversies, largely in vain, judging from the fights he had to deal with: I am for Paul, I am for Apollo, I am for Christ. During the Reformation, Christians decided to pick a fight about the relationship of faith and works. Reformers maintained with Paul that we are justified by faith, not by works; Catholics with James insisted that faith without works was dead and did not justify.

On which side does the following writer come down?

For what reason was our father Abraham blessed? Was it not because he wrought righteousness and truth through faith? Isaac, with perfect confidence, as if knowing what was to happen, cheerfully yielded himself as a sacrifice Jacob, through reason of his brother, went forth with humility from his own land, and came to Laban and served him; and there was given to him the sceptre of the twelve tribes of Israel.

All these, therefore, were highly honoured, and made great, not for their own sake, or for their own works, or for the righteousness which they wrought, but through the operation of His will. And we, too, being called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

So we are justified not by works, but by faith. So taught Pope Clement I, the fourth bishop (88-99 AD) of Rome.

However, he goes on to say

What shall we do, then, brethren? Shall we become slothful in well-doing, and cease from the practice of love? God forbid that any such course should be followed by us! But rather let us hasten with all energy and readiness of mind to perform every good work. For the Creator and Lord of all Himself rejoices in His works. For by His infinitely great power He established the heavens, and by His incomprehensible wisdom He adorned them. He also divided the earth from the water which surrounds it, and fixed it upon the immovable foundation of His own will. The animals also which are upon it He commanded by His own word into existence. So likewise, when He had formed the sea, and the living creatures which are in it, He enclosed them [within their proper bounds] by His own power. Above all, with His holy and undefiled hands He formed man, the most excellent [of His creatures], and truly great through the understanding given him— the express likeness of His own image. For thus says God: Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness. So God made man; male and female He created them.  Having thus finished all these things, He approved them, and blessed them, and said, Increase and multiply.  We see, then, how all righteous men have been adorned with good works, and how the Lord Himself, adorning Himself with His works, rejoiced. Having therefore such an example, let us without delay accede to His will, and let us work the work of righteousness with our whole strength.

We do good works because they are good, they are beautiful and desirable. God delights in his work, and so should we. Both God and man are “adorned” with good works. Good works are not a painful duty to win God’s favor, but an overflowing of the goodness which is in God and which He has implanted in us through the gift of the Holy Spirit.

As the Baptist minister, the Rev. Jack Carter, summarizes:

Paul: Faith is complete trust in, and obedience to, Jesus Christ.

Works are outward acts of ritual and adherence to a code to attain merit.

James: Faith is belief in Jesus Christ, the resurrection, and salvation.

Works are spontaneous acts of love that spring from the fruits of the Spirit.

I think he and Pope Clement are substantially in agreement. There may be important points for Catholics and Protestants to enjoy a good fight about; this is not one of them.

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A Liberation Theology Hymn for Epiphany

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Cry of the Oppressed

 

A liberation-theology Epiphany hymn? Surely you jest! Maybe not, as we shall see by looking at the hymn Hail to the Lord’s Anointed, and Psalm 72, on which it is based.

Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,
great David’s greater Son!
Hail, in the time appointed,
his reign on earth begun!
He comes to break oppression,
to set the captive free,
to take away transgression,
and rule in equity.

He comes, with succour speedy,
to those who suffer wrong;
to help the poor and needy,
and bid the weak be strong;
to give them songs for sighing,
their darkness turn to light,
whose souls, condemned and dying,
were precious in his sight.
He shall come down like showers
Upon the fruitful earth;
And love, joy, hope, like flowers,
Spring in His path to birth:
Before Him on the mountains
Shall peace, the herald, go;
And righteousness, in fountains,
From hill to valley flow.
Kings shall fall down before him,
and gold and incense bring;
all nations shall adore him,
his praise all people sing;
to him shall prayer unceasing
and daily vows ascend,
his kingdom still increasing,
a kingdom without end.

O’er every foe victorious,
he on his throne shall rest;
from age to age more glorious,
all-blessing and all-blest.
the tide of time shall never
his covenant remove;
his name shall stand for ever,
his changeless Name of love.

Psalm 72

1{A Psalm for Solomon.} Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king’s son.

2He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment.

3The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness.

4He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.

5They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations.

6He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth.

7In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.

8He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.

9They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; and his enemies shall lick the dust.

10The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts.

11Yea, all kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall serve him.

12For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper.

13He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy.

14He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in his sight.

15And he shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold of Sheba: prayer also shall be made for him continually; and daily shall he be praised.

16There shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon: and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth.

17His name shall endure for ever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed.

18Blessed be the LORD God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things.

19And blessed be his glorious name for ever: and let the whole earth be filled with his glory; Amen, and Amen.

20The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.

The King James translation indicates that this is song written by David for his son Solomon. The song addresses Solomon in exaggerated terms that could be fulfilled only by the Messiah, but Solomon in his wisdom and peacefulness foreshadows the Messiah: “One greater than Solomon is here.”

David proclaims in hope that his son, Solomon, shall reign to the ends of the earth, that kings from afar will bring him gifts, that all nations shall serve him. Solomon’s wisdom will be in service of justice, especially justice for the poor and oppressed, whom he will redeem. Therefore all nations will call him blessed. Such hopes no merely human king could fulfill, and therefore Coffman’s Commentary lists the ways in which Solomon is a type of Christ.

  1. Just as the First Israel had its most glorious extent under Solomon; so shall the Second Israel, the Church of God though Christ attain to eternal glory in Christ.
  2. Solomon was a son of David; Jesus Christ is The Son of David.
  3. Solomon reigned over the earth from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean Sea; but Christ’s dominion is “to the uttermost parts of the earth.”
  4. Solomon’s wisdom was known all over the world; but “In Christ all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.”
  5. Solomon’s reign was one of peace; and Christ our Lord is the Prince of Peace, “And of the increase of his government and of peace, there shall be no end.”
  6. Solomon sat upon the literal throne of David in Jerusalem; but Christ, risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Majesty on High, is seated upon the Throne of David in heaven (Acts 2:30-31).
  7. Kings and rulers of all the world of Solomon’s day honored him and brought presents to him. In Christ’s kingdom, “The kings of the earth bring their glory into Christ’s kingdom” (Revelation 21:24); and even in the manger at Bethlehem the kings of the earth brought unto Christ gifts of gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

But Coffman does not consider the several passages in the psalm about the judgment that shall save the poor and needy.

James Montgomery

James Montgomery 

James Montgomery (1771-1854), the English author of the hymn Hail to the Lord’s Anointed noticed these passages. For thirty years he edited a radical paper; in the fears that swept England after the French Revolution he was twice jailed because of his advocacy of social justice. He was an advocate for the end of the slave trade and of the exploitation of child chimney sweeps. During his time in jail he wrote poetry, including probably this hymn. It was first sung on Christmas Day, 1821, at a Moravian gathering

Montgomery proclaims, following the Psalm that the Messiah, great David’s greater son, comes

to those who suffer wrong;
to help the poor and needy,
and bid the weak be strong;
to give them songs for sighing,
their darkness turn to light,
whose souls, condemned and dying,
were precious in his sight.

The Messiah comes, not with violence, but like

showers
Upon the fruitful earth;
And love, joy, hope, like flowers,
Spring in His path to birth:
Before Him on the mountains
Shall peace, the herald, go.

On this Martin Luther King Day we remember one who defended the oppressed without violence but with peaceful means based on Christian love. Violence, even in a just cause, tends to beget violence in an endless downward cycle. For Montgomery, the world had been struggling long and hard with sin and oppression, a world that could (and can) be redeemed only by the One whose name is Love. Christian societies are often guilty of oppression, but unlike other historical societies, they contain a dynamic that calls for the oppressed to be freed, whether it was Martin Luther King or William Wilberforce who led the campaign to abolish the slave trade or Bartholmé de las Casas who sought to protect the natives of the Americas against the conquistadors. Christians have been oppressors, but other Christians have championed the oppressed and sought the liberation of both the sinful oppressor from his sin and the poor from oppression.

(The hymn abbreviates the original poem, and there is one significant change. In the original poem the last line was His name to us is love. The hymnal change this to his changeless Name of love. I think this is an improvement; it fits in better with the emphasis in the final lines about the enduringness of the covenant, and the “to us” is a little odd. Who are the “us”? Are there those to whom His name is not love? I think the change an improvement.

The last line also echoes the last lines of Charles Wesley’s hymn Come, O Thou Traveler unknown:

I leap for joy, pursue my way,
And, as a bounding hart, I run,
Through all eternity to prove
Thy nature and Thy name is Love.

For in the end beyond all ends, there is One whose name is Love, and in Him “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”)

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